Glenda Daniels and David Macfarlane
A hefty R975-million is in the kitty for skills development, yet about half South Africa’s employers are not claiming grants to implement training.
This emerged at a two-day Skills for Productive Citizenship conference last week that launched a skills development strategy in South Africa, which has a 40% unemployment rate.
Startling figures released at the conference show that only 1,6-million people are sufficiently skilled to meet the challenges of the global economy; seven million are unskilled; only 10% of management positions are occupied by black males; nearly 50% of South African adults are illiterate; and 75% of the workforce is functionally illiterate, with most having less than six years’ schooling.
“And what about those who have missed schooling? Must they be lined up against a wall and shot?” asked Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), echoing the urgency expressed by Professor Roy du Pr, head of the Committee of Technikon Principals, on the need for an “immediate and fast skilling of South Africa’s workforce given the pressures of global competition”.
Organised by the Department of Labour, the conference aimed to launch a “skills revolution”, which provides “for the first time priorities for skills development and sets success indicators against which progress can be measured”, says Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana.
Historically South Africa has suffered from a split between an education system delivering high-level skills for an elite minority, and apprentice-style training delivering lower-level skills for the majority. Transforming education and training is essential to the skills revolution, says Randall Howard, Cosatu leader.
The key tool for taking forward high-quality lifelong learning is the National Qualifications Framework (NQF), says Samuel Isaacs of the South African Qualifications Authority (Saqa). One of the NQF’s central aims is redress for example, via a recognition of prior learning and it is Saqa that oversees the implementation and development of the NQF.
The broad vision of the skills revolution is to lift the standards of the workforce in South Africa, create employment, get rid of inequalities, alleviate poverty and create a quality life for all.
But for this to happen, says organised labour, a 1% skills development levy (SDL), which all employers are legally obliged to pay into the skills fund, is not enough. Cosatu wants the levy raised to 4%.
“Labour won’t back off from this,” says Vavi, citing Asian countries that contributed 6% to create economic growth and employment. However, the problem now is that not enough employers are claiming their grants to implement training. This means that R975-million lies waiting to be claimed.
Mdladlana says too many employers are viewing the SDL as a tax that they grudgingly have to pay. “Unless we improve the skills base in the country growth will be hampered. Too many employers are poaching skilled employees, instead of training their own staff. We need some police for this,” he says.
The ministry has set equity targets, which include that 85% of the workforce should be black, 54% women and 4% disabled.
“The pieces are now all fitting together. It’s all actually really simple. It’s basic business sense. It’s up to employers to do the obvious come up with what they need, do a work skills plan and implement training. Employers are not signalling well to the labour market what their needs are,” says Adrienne Bird, chief director of employment and skills development services in the Department of Labour.
Now there has to be a “synergy of redress and access”. There have been major benefits, she says, when employers engage workers in drawing up a workplace skills plan and appointing a skills development facilitator. Through this both employers and employees can benefit from a more flexi-ble workforce, higher levels of productivity, lower costs, a more motivated workforce, improved employment security and accreditations that are transferable.
But only 50% of employers have implemented the skills development legislation, she says. Contrary to the views of many companies that regard the levy system as a problem, it can actually be an incentive, Bird says. For instance, if companies comply with legislation, they can receive further grants and will end up getting back more than they paid into the skills fund.
Employers must collaborate with unions and signal their needs to their particular Sector Education Training Authority (Seta), all 25 of which are up and running.
Only on the basis of a Seta-approved skills development plan can a company receive a training grant.