Some hotel managers in Kigali have appealed to government to continuously help train their staff in customer service and other technical disciplines in the hospitality industry. Hospitality is one of the fields which have increasingly attracted government’s attention in recent years, resulting in a series of on- and off-job training sessions, largely conducted by the Workforce Development Authority. It should be noted that, over the past three years, WDA has trained over 800 hotel employees for free of charge. While the government is offering free training, hoteliers and restaurant owners need to understand that the primary responsibility to build the capacity of their own staff lies with them, not anyone else. They should consider whatever support they receive from the government or elsewhere as a bonus or complement to what they are doing themselves. It is unacceptable that private businesses expect to be spoon-fed. They should step up to the plate and rather than calling for training programmes that are sponsored by the taxpayer, they use the existing goodwill to promote Private-Public Partnerships. Business owners should understand that continuous training of their employees is an integral part of a successful business model, and that training their staff is not a waste but an investment into their business. A skilled worker is, by far, likely to perform much better than an unskilled one, thus a boost to the health of the business.
