South African Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana is to visit an artisanship skills training centre on Friday as part of his monitoring of service delivery at establishments falling under his department.
In a statement on Thursday, the ministry said the advent of the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa), a skills-empowerment arm of the government’s economic growth plan, had highlighted the importance of artisanship as the backbone of technical skills “that are desperately needed”.
The ministry said this brought Indlela — the Institute for National Development of Learnerships, Employment and Labour Assessment — to the fore as the country’s long-standing trade assessment centre.
For 60 years Indlela had been operating in various guises, said the ministry, “assessing artisans of international standards, and is currently one of the government’s employment skills development strategy components”.
His visit to the plant at Olifantsfontein follows a visit to the Unemployment Insurance Fund.
During the Indlela tour, the minister will examine operations and chat to trainees and staff members about their day-to-day challenges. – I-Net Bridge