Rwanda: Wage Setting—From Policy to Practice
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The country’s troubled history has resulted in a significant proportion of the working-age population lacking formal education, restricting their ability to access better-paying work. This limitation particularly affects the rural population, which already has little access to work opportunities outside the agricultural sector. Consequently, the rural population is highly dependent on subsistence agriculture to support their families, sometimes supplemented by casual work (petty trade, farm labor, etc.). The government of Rwanda has used public works programs as a means of providing poor families with wage-earning opportunities while creating and rehabilitating community assets, generally of an infrastructural nature.
Early Public Works Experiences Rwanda’s experience with public works programs stretches back over 30 years, during which time several donor partners have implemented public works initiatives, albeit with differing wage rates, objectives, and target groups (table 8.1). The first of these, the pilot Labor-Intensive Special Public Works Program, was formulated in 1978 and implemented in 1980. It was financed over a three-year period by the government of the Netherlands, and supported by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The program was expanded for two implementation phases through 1991, with continuing support from the Netherlands as well as from Austria, Italy, and the United Nations Development Programme. Works were carried out mainly in the provinces of Gitarama and Ruhengeri, and the overall program was implemented by the Ministry of Internal Security. In 1991, the Programme National d’Actions Sociales (Social Action National Program) was developed to take over from the pilot program. The new program was implemented in two phases lasting until 1998 by the Ministry of Planning, with financial support from the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank. Rwanda next developed a public works program in 2002 to address the urgent need of quickly reabsorbing the half-million unemployed and
Table 8.1 Institutional Structure in Rwanda Provinces Districts Imirenge (sectors) Akagari (cells) Umdugudu (villages)
5 30 416 2,148 14,837
Note: The country has four provinces (Northern, Southern, Eastern, and Western), and Kigali City, though a local government, has a status equivalent to that of a province.