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BBBEE movement

Tuesday, 16 March 2010 08:30

Lack of skills threaten progress with BBBEE

The South African economy is suffering today because not enough artisans were trained in the past and not enough are being trained for today and for the future, according to Vusi Mabena, skills development adviser to the Chamber of Mines. In a keynote speech to the Skills and Training Summit at the CSIR yesterday he said the challenge is being exacerbated by legislative conditions such as the BBBEE codes of good practice, employment equity and affirmative action.

"These legislative arrangements are prudent and they are the right thing to do to address the imbalances of the past.”

"However we do need to be cautiously circumspect if we need to address real economic growth."

He was addressing delegates from all over the country who had gathered at the CSIR Convention Centre to listen to experts and to share experiences and to seek consensus on possible solutions to the country's shortage of skills -- described by economists as the greatest challenge South Africa's economic growth.

Lack of skills, Mabena said, was contributing to the service delivery protests mushrooming all over the country.

"If we do not have appropriately skilled township planners, managers and skilled artisans to deal with basic service delivery needs of the community, that community will never settle or be economically sustainable. There are still municipalities without engineers, especially in the rural areas. It takes too long to fill vacancies in these areas, and even in the metropolitan municipalities.

"If we do not address some of these skills which are important for our survival, let alone economic growth needs, we have no chance of growing our economy."

"Topics at the Skills and Training Summit, which has been endorsed by Business Unity South Africa and the South African Board of People Practice, included:

* The lack of skills as a major challenge to the economic growth of our country
* Quality assuring South Africa's education
* The new higher education qualification framework and its impact on skills development
* BEE and maximising on skills development programmes
* The need for reliable data for informed decision-making on the skills gap
* The graduate placement project - unemployed graduates with qualifications but not the necessary skills required by industries
* Apprenticeships
* Professional recognition and development for skills development practitioners

Nombulelo Nxesi, the CEO of the ETDP SETA, spoke on behalf of Max Makhubalo, the chairman of InterSETA, the newly unified voice of the Sector Education Training Authorities, spoke on the role of the SETAs.

"SETAs need to correct the misconception that they are in competition with each other. In fact there are very many instances where they work together for the good of us all," he said recently.

Other speakers included Adam Habib, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, Charlotte Mokoena, CEO, Telkom Management Services and Mthunzi Mdwaba, CEO of Torque IT and vice-president of Business Unity South Africa.

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