HUYE - Chantal Rwakazina, an expert in charge of Capacity Building at the Rwanda Association of Local Government Authorities (RALGA), said Wednesday that poor human resources management has been identified as one of the key issues affecting the smooth running of activities in the districts.

She made the remarks at the closing of a two-day induction training organised for Directors of Administration and Human Resources, drawn from across the country.
The training was meant to enlighten participants on their roles and responsibilities under a new organisational structure in districts.

The training addressed key issues resulting from poor management such as low employee morale and low productivity, high employee turnover, poor evaluation processes of employees, poor placement and deployment among other things.

"We have faced a big challenge of high turnover of district staff in the past. We think that these people will help us clean up the human resource environment. We expect, through this collaboration, that local governments will retain staff so that districts have an institutional memory,” Rwakazina said.

On the high turnover of staff in districts, Rwakazina said that there is no single identifiable reason for this undesirable trend.

"At the beginning we thought it was an issue of low salaries, but later realised that it is more complex than this. For example we are now discovering that there is a lot of workload on workers at district level. We hope that these new directors will help us get to the root cause of the problem.”

The human resource managers received briefing from representatives of various government organs. A presentation from the Ministry of Labour focused on the role of Directors of Administration and Human Resources, especially on human resource management.

Participants were also enlightened on the capacity building fund and how to access it by officials from the Public Sector Capacity Building Secretariat.

Benon Rwabugande, the Director of Administration and Human Resources in Musanze District, said the training had enabled participants to exchange experiences and learn from one another.

"Our duties and responsibilities have been well elaborated during this training; we have realised that as human resource managers, we have a duty to manage district employees well if they are to deliver on their various responsibilities,” he said.

The Government created the post of Director of Administration and Human Resources in the new district organisation structure in May, this year.

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