At the initiative of the new Director General of Algerian Customs, with the financial support of the Eurocustoms Fund, a national support mission in the field of Human Resource Management (HRM) was carried out by the WCO in Algiers from 26 to 30 May 2019. The Workshop was formally opened by Mr. Mohamed OUARET, the DG of Algerian Customs, to show the importance it places on human resources management and its commitment to building an HRM system that complies with international standards and best practices. In his opening remarks, the DG highlighted the singularity of the economic and social context in which Algerian Customs evolves, requiring it to act strategically and with an approach based on facilitation and security. With this in mind the DG recalled the key role that all staff, men and women alike, play in this administration.

The main objective of this mission was to consolidate the efforts by the HRM working group, including strengthening their capacities in competency-based HRM and raising the Steering Committee’s awareness of the importance of the HRM modernization process and the importance of its commitment to its success.

During this mission, the HRM working group, whose members are from the main Customs administration service (9 women, 11 men), worked jointly with the WCO expert to design the requisite HRM competency based tools. This mission resulted in the finalization and validation of a job catalogue for core business, a competency catalogue and job descriptions for operational jobs. Those tools were presented by the project manager on behalf of the team to the Executive Committee. The Committee confirmed its interest in the material and volunteered to support the modernization group throughout this process. It was agreed that 15 October 2019 would be the target date to finalize and validate all the tools and that this would be followed by communication and change management activities.

It is important to emphasize that in order to unify the HR modernization process at the level of the Ministry, a meeting was held with the Human Resources Directorate of the Ministry of Finance. The latter is supported by a private cabinet in this process. The approach advocated by the WCO and the Algerian Customs has been welcomed and will serve as a basis of work for the other departments of the Ministry.

For more information on this mission and People Development Programme, please contact Capacity.Building@wcoomd.org.