South African Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana on Wednesday called on the country’s employers to open their doors to young prospective employees for learnership programmes.
This comes after the Sectoral Education and Training Authorities (Setas) CEO forum meeting held in Johannesburg from January 22 to 23 ended on a high note with a renewed commitment from Setas to redouble its efforts towards meeting the skills development strategy targets and drawing up a new strategy for 2005 and 2009.
The meeting, which centred on accelerating learnership implementation, discussed among others draft regulations emerging from the Skills Development Amendment Act as an intervention to strengthen Setas’s performances to meet the National Skills Development Strategy targets.
Written public comments for the draft Service Level Agreement and the amended Skills Development Funding regulations have already been invited and are expected to reach Mdladlana in the first part of February.
The two regulations establish mechanisms to deal with the standards and criteria for the evaluation and measuring of Setas’s service delivery in meeting targets and financial prudence.
The meeting also dealt extensively with regulations of the Act that guide the establishment of the 20 Employment and Skills Development Lead Employer pilot projects, a precursor to the Employment and Skills Development Agencies (Esdas)
The Lead Employer project, to be funded by the sectors, will start operating in March to assist small businesses to actively participate in structural training and learnerships.
Each of the 20 pilot projects will manage approximately 550 learners and it is anticipated that approximately 11Â 000 young unemployed learners will benefit from these projects.
The Labour Department said the establishment of Esdas will remove the administrative burden from the employers.
“Employers will have no reason for not taking on young and unemployed learners in their workplaces for skills development and on the job training. As government we now appeal to employers to open doors for the unemployed youth,” Mdladlana said.
If one employer can take one learner for training and development, about 200Â 000 young people will be in learnership programmes, the minister pointed out.
Esdas will only be launched later in the year once legislation allows for it.
Setas was also reminded to heed the deadline for applications for the re-establishment of the 25 operating institutions for the new phase of the National Skills Development Strategy.
The current phase expires in March 2005 and Setas must apply to the ministry for the renewal of its certifications of establishment before the end of March 2004. — I-Net Bridge