Human Resource Managers for Provinces and Districts have been advised to develop a training needs’ assessment in advance. This is expected to help their staff gain more skills through capacity building.

This emerged Friday in a one-day workshop in Kigali that brought together officials from the Human Resources and Institutional Capacity Development Agency (HIDA-MSCBP) and Directors of Human Resources at the district and provincial levels.

The workshop served as an occasion for Directors of Human Resources to express their dissatisfaction over the way policy making in capacity building is done, saying local consultations before workshops would be the best way to make trainings more fruitful.

Raphael Mulindabigwi, the Director of Human Resources in Ngoma District, Eastern Province, said that trainers should increase time dedicated to such trainings to allow them gain more skills, but he also questioned the methodology used.

"Like now I came here without even knowing what I was coming for,” he lamented, insisting on the fact that HIDA trainings are most of the time organised by top officials without prior consultations to the beneficiaries.

"They should base on our own planning, otherwise it doesn’t help much.”

One of the objectives of the workshop was to engage in dialogue with institutions having a stake in capacity building for local government entities, which would result in identification of training priorities that are critical to the implementation of EDPRS objectives.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Labour, Marceline Mukakarangwa, said that such a framework will allow transferring executive responsibilities to local government institutions, which is more productive.

"Building the capacity of civil servants is also building the capacity of all Rwandans,” she said, noting that the human resource is the backbone of the country’s economy.

Mukakarangwa mentioned that in the move to carry on with capacity building for better service delivery, 344 civil servants from 11 districts are about to be trained in various domains, while 25 others selected from the provincial level are now undergoing courses on a wide range of issues to strengthen their skills.

Programmes on civil servants trainings in capacity building have been financially supported by the Belgian Technical Cooperation (CTB).

CTB Technical Assistant, Laurent Messiaen, revealed that they have assisted the programme with 5 million Euros, of which three million are expected to be spent on civil servants capacity building process.

The workshop was organised by HIDA in collaboration with the Ministry of Labour (MIFOTRA), Rwanda Institute of Administration and Management (RIAM), Rwanda Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA) and the National Decentralisation Implementation Secretariat (NDIS).

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