Human resource development practitioners should ensure that public servants have the required skills to deal with service delivery and a growing economy, the Minister of Public Service and Administration said on Monday.
Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi was speaking at the 10th Public Service Trainers Conference at the Sandton Convention Centre.
She said international experience had shown that a number of factors were deemed critical if skills development was to be supported within the context of the developing world.
The factors include:
sustainable infrastructure to support learning and development expertise in various economic sectors;
commitment from key role-players in the government, public and private sector; and
commitment and delivery on the part of the various professional bodies promoting skills development.
”We are very clear at this juncture that the available skills and capacity in all sectors are posing constraints”
Fraser-Moleketi said government had embarked on a number of initiatives to curb these constraints but that much depended on the community of educators, trainers, facilitators and human resource development experts who attended the conference.
”Notwithstanding the strides that the public service has made in the area of human resource development, there still remains room for improvement in areas of recruitment and selection, performance management, human resource planning, etc.”
Public works had agreed to establish within a few weeks a multi-stakeholder working group, Jipsa (the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition). Jipsa would, together with the government, business, labour and civil society, respond to the skills challenge in as practical a manner as possible.
Fraser-Moleketi said the initiative was established to assist the thousands of unemployed graduates to find work or gain additional skills, and to support higher enrolment for learnerships, internships and apprentices.
”The public sector is and must be a learning organisation,” she said. — Sapa