Opening Address By The Acting Premier Of The Northern Cape Province, Ms Grizelda Cjiekella On The Occasion Of The Provincial Skills Consultative Workshop, 03 – 04 April 2013, In Kimberley.

Programme Director
Distinguished Participants
Members of the National Skills Authority, Sector Education and Training Authorities
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen

I would like to thank you all for devoting your valuable time to participate in this important provincial skills consultative workshop, despite your busy schedules. This indicates the importance you attached to this event, which is aimed at discussing our skills development strategy and post-education and training system.

Our converging together at this workshop reflects our interest and desire to see more effective implementation of the skills initiatives that we are embarking upon as a country generally and a province in particular.

I am also pleased to know that the participants will be briefed on the current developments with regard to the National Skills Development Strategy and the desire to participate actively in our skills revolution initiatives or to influence the process to benefit society at large.

This consultative workshop, also provide us with an opportunity to assess the impact of some of the skills policies and strategies so that they respond in a meaningful manner to our Provincial Growth and Development Strategy.

Programme Director, participating in discussions that are aimed at developing and investing in our people, is a top priority of our government because we believe that skills development is a key component of a broader menu of strategies whose outcome must be measured against the following three national goals of our government for 2014:

• Drastically reducing unemployment;
• Alleviating poverty; and
• Concurrently, reducing inequity in employment and empowering our people in asset ownership.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are also aware that over the years that have passed since the Skills Development Act of 1999; literally millions of our people have been trained under its banner. Through this legal instrument we were able to set up institutions, systems, processes and regulations that assisted us to develop career-paths, new occupations and trade qualifications that are in line with those of international communities.

They assisted us to develop the skills of millions of South Africans. Many of these people have been the workers who keep our economy running in the mines, offices, shops, farms and factories of our nation.

With the training they have received, we believe that the productivity and competitiveness of their workplaces have been improved as well as their own employment security and their livelihood has been enhanced. In addition, hundreds of thousands of unemployed young and old people have also been trained, and they have used the skills that they have acquired to find work in the formal labour market, to create their own income generating opportunities or to participate in social development projects that aim to improve the lives of their communities.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is for this reason that we concur that despite the challenges and shortcomings that we continue to face, the skills revolution that the legislation was intended to unleash can be viewed as work in progress.

Programme Director, we must continue to assist the people of South Africa to realise their aspirations and dreams to eradicate poverty and to contribute to employment creation through massive skilling and training programmes.

Given the serious skills disparities that continue to exist in our country we must equip our people with skills that will enable them to participate effectively in the socio-economic mainstream of our country. We are still sitting on a youth unemployment time bomb that can explode anytime unless we provide access to learning, livelihood and employment opportunities.

Of concern, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the plight of the large numbers of young people graduating or dropping out of the general schooling system, the Further Education and Training (FET) and higher education institutions and continue to join the labour market that they were never prepared for.

We must extensively reflect on some of these challenges and propose various solutions going forward to achieve our goals. We must also hear how the various sectors and government departments continue to develop their sector or Human Resource Development (HRD) strategies and how these strategies are linked to these national initiatives.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are also confident that the establishment of the new university in the province will also go a long way to produce the necessary skills required by our economy. Universities and other tertiary institutions have and continue to play leading roles in the development of societies, training skilled labour for the economy and creating processes and knowledge that lead to new products and technologies. The quality of human capital and tertiary institutions determines which countries move to the technology frontier in the world and which countries do not. If skilled labour trained by these tertiary institutions is to be useful to the economy, it must meet the needs of the economy
Finally, I want to extend my appreciation to the National Skills Authority for having worked tirelessly and guided us in the manner that they did to organise this workshop.

I wish you all the best in your deliberations and hope that the two days that we are going to spend together will take us a step further in changing the phase of our skills development interventions in the province.

Moreover, I wish you a very productive and fruitful two days of deliberations and feel confident that you will all leave the workshop enriched and better armed to fulfill the expectations of our people for a strong and constantly improving skills system.

I Thank You

Click here to download the NCPG consultative workshop Final Declaration.