KABANDA'S MUSINGS: Go and follow your ‘dossier’

My Supervisor casually said to me, “genda ukurikirane dosiye yawe” loosely translated “go and follow your dossier”. I was not sure what she meant, so I asked her why I should “follow my dossier”. “Because you will not be paid”, she said with a smile. I thought it was strange because I had fulfilled my part of the contract and what remained was for my employers to pay me my wages. Why would I tell someone to do his/her work? What would I say to someone who came from his/her place to work? Why would I remind someone to do his/her work? A dozen days into the second month I went to my supervisor and reported that I had not been paid for the first month to which she replied that I had not followed my dossier. She said I should ask the Director of Finance who told me that my dossier had not reached his office and I should ask his Secretary. The Secretary checked her paper filled desk and told me the file had not come into her position so I went the accountant who told me he was busy: could I come back in the afternoon? The next day I found out that the Accounts Clerk had put it in his drawer because my Supervisor had not put her initials on one of the pages in the Memo she sent to Managing Director. The next day the Accounts Clerk unfortunately got ill and for two days did not come to work. When she came she told me my dossier was the Accounts Clerk who was “busy” that whole day. The next day he went to attend a workshop that took three days and my dossier was in his drawer. When he came back he told me he had forwarded my dossier. A week after I asked him and he told me that the “Admin” had not signed my dossier so he had taken it to her. Three days later the Admin told me he had not seen my dossier, could I follow it up? The Secretary to the Admin was busy the whole and the next. When she was finally less busy she said the dossier had not gone through the “Secretariat Centrale” and she had to make sure it did so. Could I take it to Centrale so that whatever traditionalism carried out on the dossier was done faster? She said no I was a “temporary worker” and could not handle such important documents. The next week she had not taken it to Secretariate centrale because she had been busy but she would take it in my presence there and then. The ladies in the Secretariate did their part and the dossier went to the accounts clerk but he put it in his drawer for a week. When I asked him about my dossier he said that a copy of my contract had not been attached to my payment request. I hurried to the Admin to request him for a copy of the contract, (I had not got a copy even though I was a signatory to the contract) she said it was lunch time. He did not come for work in the afternoon. When the Admin came the next day he attended a meeting in the morning and in the afternoon he went to attend a preparatory class for the ACCA. When I finally gave him a copy, the accountant started “formation” which lasted for four days and the next week he forwarded to the Secretary to the Director of Finance where it lasted a month. When the payment was finally processed I had lost interest in work and the job. I got paid the second month seven months later. “Temporary workers” in upcountry offices spent a sizable portion of their salaries on trips to and fro Kigali “following their dossiers”. Many Rwandans who work in offices, for reasons best known to them, take pride in having piles and piles of papers on their desks, tables and bookshelves, possibly as testimony of how much work and important documents they handle. It is amazing to find that after two or three days, the same papers may be in the same place and other papers may be piled on their top. One does not need to be an industrial psychologist to know that what is seen on the table represents what is inside the head. A table or desk that is organized with papers in the right place makes the employee more effective and efficient and on the other hand a table that is strewn with piles of papers facing different directions makes the employee tired even before he has started any work. Next time someone says, “go and follow your dossier”, it will not be that the person withholding it wants “something small” from your pocket; some Rwandans are either evil, lazy or both. And when someone tells you to come back another time, look at how organized their desk is. What you see on the table may represent what is going on in their head. Email: ekaba2002@yahoo.com