Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana has officially opened the Artisan Training and Test Prosperite Centre in Humansdorp which aims to increase the number of skilled artisans in the Eastern Cape. ...more

The mining industry has met many of the employment equity and skills development challenges it has faced over the past few years and far exceeds other industries in its commitment to training, says Landelahni Business Leaders CEO Sandra Burmeister. These were the findngs of a survey the organisation ran, which also inidicated that the country needs to train 120 000 artisans and this could cost and addititional R9billion. ...more

R700 million has been released by the manufacturing Seta, Merseta, for the trainining of artisans and apprentices. This is the first major project the Seta has launched for more than a year. Merseta CEO Dr Raymond Patel tells the Skills Portal that his organisation is planning to spend more than R1 billion on training over the next two years. ...more

The lives of more than one thousand employed and unemployed people will be changed for the better thanks to a R23 million Gautrain skills training project. According to the Gautrain Rapid Round-Up the training initiative is over and above the training undertaken by the Bombela Consortium as part of their commitments under the Concession Agreement. ...more

State electricity utility Eskom will spend R800 million per year running its own tertiary institution to train its staff in the hope of reducing its skills shortage. Lack of skills at the utility has been partly blamed for the country's electricity crisis. The Eskom Corporate University, as it is temporarily known, is an extension of the existing Eskom Learning Institution (ELI). ...more

Africa and the rest of the developing world has become the training ground for developed nations in areas such as engineering, teaching, health services and the financial sector. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel believes globalisation and growth have accentuated shortages of skills for engineers, doctors, nurses, plumbers and other skilled artisans. ...more

Merseta has commenced an Accelerated Artisan Training Programme (AATP) with its key levy paying organisations to address the steady decline in artisan training from the heights of the 1980s. Phase 1 of the project carries a budget of R70 million. ...more

As the impact of the recent teacher’s strike on matric results is still anxiously being debated and matric students frantically try to recoup lost weeks of study in the run-up to their final examinations ...more

South Africans must stop thinking that the dire shortage of artisans and engineers is unique to the country and caused by the brain drain: it is an international phenomenon because young people are afraid to get their hands dirty. “Engineering and its associated professions are not particularly sexy,” says Merseta CEO Dr Raymond Patel. “Young people would far rather work with computers.” ...more