While presenting its 2011/12 report and 2012/13 action to the parliament, the Public Service Commission admitted that there exist irregularities in the recruitment of public servants, which sometimes leads to employing incompetent individuals, while those who meet all the requirements are ignored.

Last year, the commission analyzed 208 job recruitment reports from 96 public institutions.

"In the report we got, we noticed that in some institutions, the requirements announced were not the ones used during the selection of candidates to compete; giving wrong marks to candidates because the selecting team wants a specific person to pass; qualified candidates who were not given jobs in their positions; competition for an already occupied position and so on," said Francois Habiyakare, PSC's head.

Most of the above cases were found in institutions like the Rwanda Development Board (RDB), the School of Finance and Banking (SFB), Kabgayi School of Nursing and Midwifery, and in districts like Gasabo (Kigali city), Rubavu (Western Province), and Nyaruguru and Nyamagabe in the Southern Province.

Last year, 2,134 vacant jobs were available in the public sector for which 64,314 interested candidates applied. Among all the applicants, 44,080 went on to the examinations which 3,797 (8.6% of the qualified applicants) passed. Among those who passed, 2,137 already had a job, while the other 1,659 were added to databases for possible future recruitment.

"The number of those who succeed in the job recruitment competition is very low compared to those who applied. And the number of job hunters is very high compared to the available jobs," said PSC's president.

The commission declared to have received 77 appeals in 2012 from people requesting the review of their recruitment exams or irregularities in oral the interviews.