SUMMARY REPORT OF THE PLENARY SESSION OF OCTOBER 16, 2024

In the year two thousand and twenty-four, on the sixteenth day of October, senators met in the Senate hemicycle at Gitega for the 210^th plenary session of the sixth legislature relating to an oral question with debate addressed to the Minister of Public Service, Labor and Employment.

The proceedings of the session were chaired by Honourable Denise NDADAYE, First Deputy-Speaker of the Senate. This session began, as usual, with a prayer at 09:56 and saw the participation of 27 senators and a Government Representative, namely the Minister of Public Service, Labor and Employment, Mr. Venuste MUYABAGA.

After welcoming the august assembly and the presentation of greetings from the Right Honourable Speaker of the Senate in a working mission abroad, a word of welcome was addressed to the Government Representative and he was given the floor to answer the oral question before moving on to questions of the general debate for clarification.

When asked by senators whether the Ministry does not plan to organize training for national technicians who could monitor and maintain the software responsible for processing civil servants, given that these services are currently entrusted to foreigners, the Minister replied that in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and within the framework of the PAFEN Project, the Ministry intends to organize such training.

Regarding the slowness observed in the program for the digitalization of civil service services, the Government Representative said that significant progress has already been made. He gave the example of the digitalization of all civil servants’ files and the interconnection of provincial counters with the central Ministry. As for the strategies put in place to cut short the remuneration of fictitious staff, the Minister said that after the payment of salaries, the lists are directly sent to the managers in charge of human resources to check for cases of irregularities.

To the question asked by the senators as to why civil servants who take up their duties receive their salaries late, the Government Representative indicated that this is explained by the fact that their files arrive late at the Ministry of Public Service or arrive incomplete. For him, a solution that has been taken by the authorities of the ministry is that any civil servant who is recruited will now start work after submitting a complete file.

To the question asked by the honourable senators as to whether the daily service hours are respected in public services, Venuste MUYABAGA replied that the majority of public services do not properly respect the service hours. To this end, a meeting of the States General of the Public Service will soon be organized to look into this issue, he specified.

The session, which took place in a climate of perfect understanding, was closed at 2 p.m. with a prayer.