WHAT A STIFF RACE? 20,000 APPLY FOR 49EAC JOB SLOTS!

 

BY GRACE MACHA IN ARUSHA

What a stiff competition for the usually well paying jobs! 

About 20,000 professionals from across the East African Community (EAC) are waiting for the results of 49 job slots they recently applied for.

The secretary general Peter Mathuki believes the deluge demonstrates eagerness of the East Africans to serve in the regional body. 

Others think this was due to the growing number of the professionals in the market across the six nation bloc.

Yet for others, the scenario is an indication of a rising number of skilled labour, some with poor renumerations, and now attracted by  plum jobs at the EAC.

"The Community had received more than 20,000 applications for the 49 positions", Dr. Mathuki revealed  on Wednesday when he addressed an online press conference.

Without giving figures of applications from each of the six partner states, the EAC boss said profiling and shortlisting of suitable candidates has been completed.

According to him, this was the first recruitment for the EAC staff involving large numbers of workers for a period of five years.

He attributed the delay to contentious issues which, he said, were finally sorted out in collaboration with the partner states. 

"The partner states through the Council of Ministers had already resolved outstanding issues that have been blocking recruitment", he said. 

The recruitment of the 49 vacant positions within the EAC,its organs and institutions spread across the region were advertised early this year. 

Dr. Mathuki, who took over as EAC boss in April,said he was relieved that the recruitment drive has finally taken course. 

He said this would improve the performance of the organs and institutions whose performance had been affected by scarcity of the critical human resources.

EAC currently has three substantive organs and nine autonomous institutions spread across Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda. 

It is estimated that the Arusha-based organization has about 400 employees, over a half of them working with the Secretariat, its executive arm. 

Early last year, it was announced that about a quarter of the total workers would be retrenched in a cost cutting exercise. 

However, as the regional body recently withered through the  cash crisis storms and the devastating Covid-19, the subject had died off. 

Instead, a job analysis carried out by the Nairobi-based consultancy Ernst and  Young found out that EAC was short of the benchmark professionals. 

This was amplified in April this year, when executives of the Community urged the Council of Ministers to address the critical shortage of manpower. 

Christophe Bazivamo, the deputy secretary general (Productive and Social Sectors) said the EAC institutions, in particular, were understaffed. 

When reached on the number of employment gaps available now at the EAC, an official of the secretariat declined, saying such breakdown needed time.