Rwandan Teachers petition parliament over recruitment process
Thursday January 28 2021
Schools have been waiting for the deployment of the teachers months after reopening from the pandemic induced closure. PHOTO | FILE
Hundreds of Rwandan teachers are contesting the way education officials handled the latest teachers’ recruitment exercise and have lodged complaints with parliament citing malpractices and fraud they claim saw eligible applications eliminated, Rwanda Today has learnt.
The complaint lodged in the form of a petition to parliament puts officials who handled the mega recruitment for over 28,700 teachers in the spotlight.
Rwanda’s Ministry of Education officials opted for direct recruitment to expedite staffing of thousands of vacant teaching positions countrywide following prolonged closure of schools due the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the complainants, Rwanda Education Board (REB) and District officials involved in the recruitment process rejected several applications that met stipulated criteria of excellent academic performance despite picking many with lower grades.
In a petition to Parliament, they argue that the process lacked transparency, and was marred by malpractices that denied many qualifying candidates a chance to get employment.
The candidates also point to loopholes where applicants who allegedly were yet to complete their studies made it on the list of shortlisted candidates and placed in employment, those whose actual academic degrees were changed as well as instances where academic grades were manipulated on both the shortlisted and final placement lists.
“We have been gathering pieces of evidence that we are eager to present to prove that we were unfairly disqualified. We had brought this problem to the attention of REB and the ministry of education but nothing was done about it to date,” said Jean Marie Vianney Ahishakiye, a representative of 111 candidates who took their grievances to Parliament last week.
“These are individuals with cases that we took as a sample to represent the rest. We are seeking Parliament to help us get justice since they have powers to summon organs that handled the recruitment exercise.”
Eric Mutabazi, the University of Rwanda’s A0 physics and geography major said the malpractices were more evident in Rusizi District where, due to the prolonged lockdown, several rounds of recruitments were put on hold.
Flouting rules
He claims however that by the time recruitment took place, education officials flouted rules and regulations that were set out to guide selection of candidates.
“It is still unclear what rules were followed after it became apparent that even people with 55 marks were picked, leaving out top performing ones with more 76 marks. I had 74.93 but got disqualified yet peers with less score were picked,” he said, adding that formal complaints submitted to REB on January 13 and 15th respectively got no feedback to date.
Parliament confirmed receipt of the complaint.
In November, two senior REB officials were suspended in connection with the matter, and Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) later indicated that it was investigating everyone in connection with alleged graft in the recruitment and had made arrests of suspects who include a REB staff and candidates.
However, it was unclear whether progress was made as contacted officials were not forthcoming with details about the outcome of the investigations.
So far, Districts are understood to be finalizing placement of teachers to fill vacant positions in schools across the country after the Ministry of education approved the list of candidates in the contested recruitment.
Government is filling up vacancies in primary, secondary and TVET schools across the country. Schools have been waiting for the deployment of the teachers months after reopening from the pandemic induced closure.