New skills strategy is open for business
28-MAR-06
Called the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) and a critical building block in terms of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of SA (ASGISA), the initiative is aimed at identifying skills that are critical to growing the economy to six percent by 2014.
ASGISA identified six factors that constrain growth in the country and skills shortage was one of the key focus areas that needed urgent attention.
“The most fatal constraint to shared growth is skills and it should be noted that skills are not just one of the constraints facing Asgisa but a potentially fatal constraint,” said Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka at the launch today.
JIPSA is a high-level task team and its job is to identify urgent skills needs and advise on ways to respond to these challenges. Mlambo-Ngcuka, who is leading the ASGISA initiative, is to chair the JIPSA task team.
Already, several urgent interventions have been identified, such as mentoring programmes and overseas placement of trainees to fast-track their development.
Other interventions include special training programmes, bringing back retirees or expatriates, and Africans in the Diaspora.
JIPSA will have an initial life-span of three years, after which its future will be reviewed.
The rest of the JIPSA task team – approved by Cabinet – comprises senior representatives of government, labour, business, youth, women, academic institutions, science councils and state-owned enterprises.
The general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers, Gwede Mantashe, is chairing the JIPSA technical working group.
The National Business Initiative constitutes a secretariat for the JIPSA project and cabinet has agreed that people with disabilities needed to be integrated into JIPSA activities.
Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka said in the next 18-months, JIPSA ought to have identified high-calibre engineering and planning skills to network industries such as transport, communication and energy- which are at the core of infrastructure development.
City, urban and regional planning and engineering skills are also sought at municipalities, which are at the coalface of service delivery in the country.
Artisans and technical skills are also sought as the country gears itself for massive infrastructure developments such as the Gautrain rapid rail link, which is due to start construction.
The Bombela Consortium that won the bid to construct the Gautrain have committed to place about 120 learners, including women and youth, to acquire the much needed technical skills in the construction industry.
According to Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka, Eskom and Transnet are already recruiting people with technical and engineering skills to grow their respective parastatals.
She said Eskom was bringing back retired engineers to advance its projects and transfer the much needed skills to young engineers in line with the JIPSA objectives.
Another area requiring attention is the training of teachers, particularly for mathematics, science, Information and Communication Technologies and language competence in public education.
With that in mind, Deputy Education Minister Enver Surty said the education department would expand the Dinaledi schools from 102 to 400 this year.
The Dinaledi project has been established to support selected schools and teachers with mathematics and science. Mr Surty said Dinaledi schools would be further expanded to 1000 schools in 2008.
As part of the expansion of growing more science literate learners, the department will test 4500 maths and science educators to check their competency levels in teaching such subjects.
“By 2008 we will have more than 50 000 learners doing maths and science in public schools,” said Mr Surty.
Interventions in the educational sphere also include a major upgrading of Further Education and Training colleges as well as a major revamping of the Adult Basic and Education Training programme, based on models developed in Cuba and New Zealand.
“Established educational institutions such as universities, FETs and schools will always be the backbone for the training that JIPSA will need,” said the Deputy President.
JIPSA also seeks to employ ways of ensuring that unemployed graduates- whose numbers have grown significantly in the past five years- are absorbed into the economy.
The initiative would ensure those unemployed graduates are retrained on the job to address the mismatch in the type of training offered to such students as compared to the skills needed by the job market.
In this light, the Umsobomvu Youth Fund has set up a database of unemployed graduates for all businesses to search for graduates who had qualifications compatible to their job requirements.
JIPSA will also maintain a database of skills needs in the economy, including providing and understanding of patterns, trends and key indicators or priority skills demand and supply.
Several stakeholders have also committed to place young university students in apprenticeships in order for them to graduate in their respective fields.
The skills revolution would ultimately ensure that all South Africans begin to work towards a common purpose of increasing to 6 percent, the country’s economic growth.
By Richard Mantu and Thapelo Sakoana – BuaNews
