The labour market is set to benefit from more specialists in procurement sector after a graduate programme that was suspend half-way is now set to resume next week.

At least 40 Masters’ students, who had suspended courses over financial constraints are scheduled to proceed with their studies next week, after the Ministry of Education secured enough funds to finance the scholarship programme.

The programme was suspended late 2014, leaving students in Public Procurement Management stranded, having covered half of the course.

The four-year programme was jointly sponsored by the Government, the World Bank and Italian University of Turin.

The studies were to be conducted from the University of Rwanda College of Businesses and Economics Kigali campus but the programme remains under the University of Turin.

However, midway the programme, students from the second intake were told to stop their studies for a three-month period, but this stretched to nearly two years, forcing the affected students to petition Parliament.

By July last year, when the students filed their petition to lawmakers, government was yet to solve a Rwf1.7 billion budget deficit before the programme could resume.

However, appearing before a parliamentary committee last week, Papias Musafiri, the minister for education, assured lawmakers that students had been handed bursary confirmation letters and should get ready to return to school.

"The students are slated to resume on 29th of this month, issues of budget and mismatch of programmes with University of Turin were also harmonised,” he said.

On the other hand, Minister Musafiri told lawmakers about Rwanda’s ambition to establish the same programme at the same college in a drive to cut the hefty budget spent on the selected students.

"A number of proposals are being negotiated in line with the budget allocation in this sector, but the most important thing is to make the University of Rwanda a custodian of the programme,” Musafiri said.

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