Speaking to IGIHE, the newly appointed Director General of WDA, Eng. Pascal Gatabazi said that he is ready to fulfill his duties for he has what it takes to turn things around in the vocational skills development domain.
“I was happy to be appointed for those duties and I thank our country’s leadership for the confidence it has entrusted in me. We pledge to use all our energy to implement programmes we are charged with. Collaborating with others and working as a team, I hope we will accomplish our duties,” he said.
The former WDA DG Jerome Gasana is likely to have been dropped due to keeping big quantities of consumables meant to be used in learning processes in stores, rendering them to waste.
In June 2018, Gasana appeared before Parliament where he was questioned on persistent problems of infrastructures and consumables in the institution that he headed.
Marie Josée Kankera, a Member of Parliament told her fellow MPs then that WDA stores were filled with equipment and consumables, meant to be used under the Skills Development Project, bought with so much money but remained unused with some having got wasted in stores.
In 2011, Rwanda’s SDP was financed by the International Development Agency with Rwf18 billion loan on which the Government of Rwanda added Rwf2 billion for the implementation of the Project.
Honorable Kankera said that project aimed at helping Rwandan youth acquire vocational skills but much of the project was not implemented as most of the materials that would have been used got wasted.
Members of the Parliament highlighted that pedagogical materials were purchased before classrooms and lecture rooms were constructed. This saw some damaged while others were stolen.
The Auditor GeneralReport 2017 indicates that unused materials laid to waste are worth Rwf241,529,263 and have been in WDA stores and other affiliated vocational schools countrywide for more than three years.
{{Who is Eng. Gatabazi
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Eng. Pascal Gatabazi holds a Masters’ degree in Construction Management of Tswane University of Technology, South Africa. He graduated with a Bachelors degree in Civil Engineering from Dar es Salaam University.
He worked at Africa Development Bank in 1999 as a Project Engineer.
Eng. Gatabazi worked as the Head of Technology Research and Development at the Center for Innovations and Technology Transfer (CITT) of former Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) now College of Science and Technology (CST).
Between 2007 and 2018, he worked as the Principal of Tumba College of Technology before he was appointed Principal of IPRC Karongi in February this year, a post he has now left to the Director General of Workforce Development Authority.
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