Rwanda National Police

Rwanda National Police has a mandate to provide security of people and their property and to achieve   this  demanding duty, a number of initiatives and strategies must be applied among which crime  prevention, community policing and ensuring human security  are at the fore front .

The  Government of Rwanda in its drive to achieve  the employment targets of 200,000 jobs annually, several institutions have to come up with policies, strategies, and programmes to interlink them with the national agenda for generating adequate and productive employment opportunities.

For Rwanda National Police (RNP), contributing to the National Employment Policy (NEP) is aligned with ensuring human security by educating nationals and also providing for their welfare and this in turn reduces criminality.

One of the force’s contributions is through Gishari Integrated Polytechnic (GIP), which was established in March 2013 and has since graduated several youth in its diploma and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programmes.

GIP, a technical and vocational dducation raining school is one of the wings of the Police Training School (PTS) Gishari in Rwamagana District.

It was established in partnership with the Workforce Development Authority (WDA) to promote, facilitate, and guide the development and upgrading of skills and competencies of the national workforce including police officers and civilians, in order to enhance competitiveness and employability.

According to the Principle of GIP, ACP Sam Karemera, since the time RNP entered into agreement with WDA to establish the vocational institute, the school has recorded several achievements; among them include contributing to the National Employment Policy and improving the welfare of the people neighboring the school.

“When we came up with the concept of the school, we wanted to have a point of confluence in our respective interests - as RNP and WDA - in the field of training and skilling of the Rwandan labour force. We agreed on the principal focus of our partnership with an aim of targeting both the staff of RNP and the civilian population at large,” ACP Karemera said.

“In the last three years, we have grown and expanded, so far we have graduated about 80 students and enrolled another intake. We have built houses for people in the neighborhood, gave out cows and also employed them whenever we are putting up new structures,” ACP Karemera said.

Besides the school, students are also planning to come up with a scheme of helping poor families in Gashari sector mainly through paying their health insurance fees.

According to Gishari residents, since the establishment of the school, their lives have changed mainly because the school has offered them employment and also educated their children.

One of the residents, Jacques Mugemanyi indeed confirmed that area residents have greatly reaped much from GIP.

“Every time GIP is putting up a new structure they hire us for all the works; by the end the construction ends, someone has really earned reasonable amount to improve their livelihoods,” said Mugemanyi.

He farther pointed out that, at one point GIP singled out the poorest family of a widow in Gishari sector, constructed a house for her and also gave her a cow.

 GIP expansion

Beside the school’s social outreach, since its inception in March 2013, GIP has registered tremendous development from the numbers of students to broadening of its academic curricula.

“We started with a small number of teachers and 375 students. By then we had two programmes – diploma and a TVET programme. The diploma programme was offering courses in electricity and electronics, construction and irrigation.

By next month GIP is expecting to have a capacity of 725 students.

“Under the TVET programme, we have plumbing, domestic electronic, construction, motor vehicle mechanics and firefighting. Today, the more the school evolves the more we integrate more faculties, like carpentry which will be among the new programmes,” said the school Principle.

RNP is currently building extra 22 classrooms and has acquired advanced equipment that will be used to educate people in the Eastern Province in modern farming.

“We are planning to also put up a big demonstration farm where we will work with partners to educate the public,” ACP Karemera said.

The demonstration farm is part of the GIP agricultural programme to help farmers adopt the use of machines in their farming activities as the force moves to reinforce the country's drive to improve on productivity.

This is derived from the general observation that most tractors are lying idle in some districts in the region partly because of lack of expertise which is why GIP came up with mechanization programme to support, bridge this gap and effectively use these resources.

GIP also acquired Hydraform Machines that produce 3,000 bricks per day. This is expected to accelerate the setting up of GIP infrastructure.

“The more we educate the public the closer we get to them in that case it’s easier to identify and prevent insecurities collectively….Interaction between the police and civilians is very important  since we provide technical support to the people through skills developed from this school.”

Having civilians at GIP, he explained, is part of RNP’s community policing initiative and also implementing the national employment policy.

“Our aim is to ensure that youth do not loiter on the streets jobless,” he said.

With regards to RNP, Karemera pointed out that police officers who graduate are sometimes deployed in peacekeeping missions as Formed Police Units (FPU) where they work as experts.

The school’s projected programmes in future includes Engineering, Construction and Building sciences, faculty of information and Communication Technology, and faculty of Food Technology as well as expanding the school facilities.