Mbeki discusses skills swap with Blair
31-MAY-06
Speaking to the UK press ahead of his meeting he said that human resource development was the most urgent issue.
“It’s clear that in regard to whole areas of South African national life if we want to make better progress we need more people with skills. Whether engineering skills or management skills. This is a critical area. We want to be able to reach into the UK, to the capacity of the UK to assist,” said Mbeki.
Mbeki continued that proposals would include bringing trainers from the UK to South Africa as well as sending locals to the UK for training.
“We could also see whether, for a limited period of time, we could take retired people to mentor people on their jobs in South Africa,” said Mbeki.
“If we need 100 civil engineers to be deployed in our municipalities to assist municipal government to build capacity for water delivery, sewerage systems, roads is there a way the two governments can co-operate to find these people and fund them,” said Mbeki.
The president also announced that the Japanese government had offered assistance with supplying skilled workers for South Africa even though they have an aging population. “Lots of people are quite willing to assist. It’s a very good offer. The advantage with the UK is the advantage of language”.
“We have done an audit of skills shortage. We’ve taken a very urgent matter which is a global problem, project managers. You have state corporations with very major plans for energy, water, transport and one of the questions they are raising is that there aren’t project managers to manage what are going to be very large projects”.
“You need those people and that kind of skill with experience to make sure these ambitious projects happen”. “There are skills shortages coming up as people are investing more. And we’ve been assessing what kind of skills is needed on the government side”.
