News: Over 50% city admin employees fail competency test

Addis Abeba – The Addis Abeba City Administration has officially announced the outcomes of the competency assessment carried out by the Public Service and Human Resource Development Bureau.

Of the 15,151 candidates examined in December 2023, a total of 6,517 employees (43%) succeeded in attaining the necessary passing marks.

The purpose of this evaluation was to gauge the competency and qualifications of the city administration civil service employees.

Tassew Gebre, the head of the Public Service and Human Resource Development Bureau, provided a detailed breakdown of the results.

Within the cohort of 4,213 leadership personnel who were assessed, only 34% (1,422 individuals) met the minimum performance criterion of 60%. The remainder of the leadership group failed to reach the established threshold.

The evaluation also encompassed 10,257 members of the general staff, of whom approximately 50% (5,095 employees) passed.

In sum, 15,592 employees and managers had initially registered for the examination, which was conducted under stringent confidentiality measures by Addis Abeba University and Kotebe Metropolitan University. Of those registered, 15,151 presented themselves for the assessment.

Tassew indicate that the tests of 681 employees were voided due to a range of procedural errors, and 441 staff members were absent and did not partake in the examination as scheduled.

According to municipal authorities, competency evaluation seeks to establish objective and standardized benchmarks for employee competencies, which are expected to inform the development of training programs and professional growth initiatives within the municipal departments, thereby improving public service delivery.

But the decision has faced resistance among some Ethiopian social media users who accuse the city administration of employing the evaluation process to ethnically indiscriminate against certain groups of the city administration employees. AS