The growth of the country’s hospitality has been hampered by lack of language proficiency.

A study released late last year revealed that most Rwandans working in the hospitality industry are unable to effectively communicate in requisite foreign languages.

It says most of the employees in the industry face difficulties in communicating in English, French and Kiswahili, which are commonly used in the region.

The most affected sector is tourism, a leading foreign exchange earner for the country.

Some 33,305 respondents were interviewed in the survey conducted by OWN & Associates Limited last April that targeted hotels, tours and travel companies and event management.

The study, commissioned by Rwanda Development Board (RDB), indicates that 85,730 of the workers in the sector are not fluent in foreign languages for effective customer service. It identified language deficiency as a major problem hindering the growth of the sector.

Despite the sterling performance by this sector which has outpaced traditional foreign exchange earners like tea and coffee, both the government and the private sector are concerned the problem, if not addressed, may hinder its progress.

Language barrier

Most industry players identified language barrier as a critical challenge in hospitality business and all surveyed hotels called for proper training of employees to enable them become fluent in English, French and Kiswahili among others.

“The situation is not good. At the time of the survey, many industry workers conceded they were not fluent in Kiswahili, English and French,” an official at RDB who participated in the survey told Rwanda Today.

According to the report, 11.7 per cent indicated said they were not proficient in English, while 11.3 per cent could not communicate in Kiswahili.
This, the surveyed employees said, has hampered their capacity to communicate to clients.

The survey said 9, 651 workers cannot adequately communicate in English while 10, 035 fair poorly in Kiswahili.

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This language barrier was blamed for poor customer service delivery in the sector.

The survey also found out that aviation sub sector was relying on the services of foreigners to plug the gap.

The study said 451 of individuals interviewed in the sub sector lacked proficiency in the major foreign languages, while 157 are expatriates.

The survey found that the subsector needed about 608 personnel fluent in foreign languages.

Out of 81 air traffic controllers employed in the sub sector, 65 are expatriates while 12 employed in air safety department, five are expatriates.

Glaring non-proficiency

Out of existing 13,818 labour units in hotel industry non-proficiency in languages was glaring; 52.6 per cent of services managers, 37.6 per cent of housekeeping supervisors, 36.3 per cent waiters, 29.2 per cent cooks, 26.2 per cent in bakery activities and housekeepers at 17.3 per cent lack requisite skills.

“This reliance on expatriates on jobs that do not require high profile skills is one among other things that make cost of doing business high. Expatriates are remunerated in US dollars and this is not good for us,” a senior official at the Ministry of Labour, who preferred not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

Tourism industry is also hit by what the report terms ‘hard to fill vacancies’.

123 vacancies were not filled even after companies had advertised the posts for a period ranging between 60 to 90 days.

The companies said applicants lacked cross-cutting skills like languages, general IT skills and core job specific skills.

In the report, only 7.3 per cent of hotels surveyed allocated resources to staff training, while 22 per cent cited high employee turnover as the reason for not training.

21 per cent of hotels said their staff are adequately trained, while 16 per cent did not find rationale for on job training of staff and 35 per cent cited lack of resources to commit to staff training.

Education Ministry figures show that labour supply to the sector is also inadequate.

Between 2009 and 2011, for example, only 424 were pursuing tourism related courses with marginal 60 enrolled for programmes leading to award of certificates and diploma courses in tourism.

Rwanda Tourism College, the first tourism college in Rwanda opened shop in 2006 and is currently offering only three courses.

After four years of training, the college released 427 graduates into the job market in December which is a paltry 8.4 per cent of 5 068 skills gap.

French and English languages have been mandatory on Rwanda’s national curriculum for the last 18 years.

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A recent survey by Transparency International indicated though Rwanda has showed zero tolerance to corruption, education sector is marred by sex scandals, which could adversely affect quality of graduates released into job market.

“ The majority of staff cannot effectively communicate in French or English. In tourism sector you cannot impress or satisfy without communicating well. During low season our company sends staff to neighbouring countries for training,” David Semugisha of Wild Life Tours Rwanda told Rwanda Today.

“We project revenues from tourism to be $258 million as we cap this year (2012), which brings us closer to achieving the year’s targets,” Rica Rwigamba, Head of Tourism Department, told Rwanda Today in an interview.

She however hastened to add that poor skills are not good for the sector.