The Policing, Security, Legal, Justice and Correctional Services (Poslec) sector education and training authority (Seta) is on a mission to deliver several projects to counteract initial skepticism about its work.
Poslec services the legal industry, the private security industry, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and the Department of Correctional Services.
Poslec’s new mission statement is ‘your skills development partner of choice for a just society”.
Poslec CEO Hennie Richards said the problem in the past was that the Seta was isolated. ‘We had very little communication with our clients, who need to know what we are doing.”
Richards said much has changed since he took over as CEO last November. ‘We have turned ourselves around. One of the criticisms directed against Setas in general is that of underspending. We have allocated the entire R22-million discretionary grant fund that we received to all our projects.
‘Some of the projects include the street law project, which will introduce principles of criminal, family and consumer law to learners across the country.”
A crucial aspect often underplayed is the employment of disabled people. According to the National Disability Strategy, 99% of disabled people are unemployed.
Poslec has started a pilot project in which 30 disabled people will be trained to manage a call centre for a private security company. The project will be undertaken in conjunction with the Umsombumvu Fund. Poslec will then place the learners with 10 selected companies.
A project that Poslec has completed with notable success is a skills audit for the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. This project identified the skills needs of the department and then used the information to prepare a workplace skills plan.
Poslec funded the project, which involved interviewing the department’s 9 000 employees to determine their competencies.
Richards said the private security industry faced serious challenges in training the thousands of security guards who had worked for years, but did not have the necessary qualifications, despite being competent. Poslec has introduced an adult education programme for employees in the departments of correctional services and the justice and constitutional development.
Another project that is under way is the training of 100 candidate attorneys.
Richards said about 6 200 employers in the industries that Poslec covers are submitting work skills plans. ‘We should be getting 10 000 work skills plans. We have drawn up plans and set ourselves targets about how to get them to work with us.”
Richards said Poslec was 99% on its way to achieving what it set out to do. ‘Internally we have to finalise our structures and get our staff to work at a higher level of competency. I am [employed] on a month-to-month [basis] because I want to bind my performance to the Seta’s performance. I did not want to tie the department to a long contract where they would have to pay me out of my contract if they were not satisfied with my performance”.
He said Poslec sends quarterly reports to the Department of Labour and also uses external consultants to do client satisfaction surveys as part of the assessment of the Seta’s work.
Poslec currently is in talks with Business Against Crime in connection with training people on the work of surveillance cameras that monitor urban crime hotspots.