Prisons staff laid off

Rwanda Correctional Service (RCS) has laid off 150 support staff,mainly those in charge of discipline at different camps for the Genocide convicts serving their alternative sentences doing communal work.The Commissioner General of RCS Maj Gen Paul Rwarakabije, yesterday, told The New Times the lay off began in April after each of the affected employee’s contracts had expired.There are 44 camps for Genocide convicts who are serving their respective alternative sentences under the communal work programme commonly known as TIG, where 10,456 Genocide convicts are currently serving their sentences.“It was imperative to relieve them of their work as the camps are reducing,” he said.But the official said they could recruit some of those laid off as prison-warders.Of the 150 who were discharged, 76 have so far applied for prison warder jobs, he said.However, some of the affected employees who talked to The New Times complained that the decision was carried out unfairly.Eugene Gakwaya, said they were not informed about the move and were not given discharge packages. The law governing public service stipulates that for any organisation to dismiss an employee it has to inform them 15 days before taking the decision.“Our dismissal was done in an unlawful manner … and it breached labour laws,” Gakwaya said, adding thatthey had petitioned the Public Service Commission over the issue. However, Rwarakabije said, “We laid them off to reduce our budget expenditure and it was not done in an unfair manner as it’s being alleged because we had informed them earlier.”Theogene Nsengiyumva, another victim of the layoff, said since their dismissal, they have written two complaint letters to the RCS management but they are yet to receive any feedback.Apparently, the workers were employed under six-month renewable contracts.Citing cases where some staff entered secret deals to employ convicts in community projects, the Deputy Commissioner General of RCS, Mary Gahonzire explained that some were dismissed over indiscipline.“We are still in the process of reforms and our target is to make the institution more professional, so it’s in this regard that we decided to dismiss them.”According to Gahonzire, each of those laid-off earned a monthly salary of Rwf141, 000 which is four times bigger than a monthly salary of a prison warder - and the institution could no longer afford to pay them their salaries due to a limited budget.She promised that the RCS would give packages to the affected workers under the 2012-2013 budget. RCS was created under Law N° 34/2010 of 12/11/2010 after the merging of the former National Prisons Service (NPS) and Works for General Interest commonly known as TIG.