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Ministers present,
Colleagues,
Ladies and gentlemen.

The President began his state of the Nation address at the opening of Parliament with the following words:

"Decision-makers across the globe have accepted the reality that the global struggle to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment is fundamental to the well being of human society."

With numerous subsequent references in his speech, the President re-affirmed the strong belief of government that effective Human Resources Development or, as the President puts it "the development of our greatest resource, our people", is fundamental to government's strategy to eradicate poverty and underdevelopment.

When the Minister of Labour and I presented the Human Resources Development Strategy in April last year, we said that it serves to fulfil the commitment made in the RDP for a "people-driven process" of transformation and social development.

The significance of this Human Resources Strategy is further confirmed by the fact that it has been identified as a key priority of government for this year. This is no doubt because, as the President puts it "...it is the surest guarantee to sustainable employment and economic development."

The overarching goals of the HRD Strategy are extremely ambitious. They include improving the Human Development index for the country, a reduction of inequality and an improved position on the international competitiveness table.

The Human Development Index is computed using indicators such as life expectancy at birth, levels of adult literacy and level of attainment of general schooling in the population. This index together with the goal of reducing inequality ensures that our HRD strategy is located within a broad development strategy that focuses on the poor in this country. The fact that South Africa is second only to Brazil as the most unequal society in the world, serves to confirm the importance of these goals.

The third goal, improving our international competitiveness, ensures a strong link between the HRD strategy and the Macro-economic Development strategy of government.

In setting these high goals, we have established an exacting measure of success for the long-term implementation of the strategy. And indeed, exacting it has to be if we are to ensure that the benefits of accelerated Human Resources Development impact on poverty eradication and underdevelopment as well as on economic development.

South Africa has historically been ranked last based on criteria related to the availability of skills in the labour market. The Ministries of Education, Labour, Trade & Industry and Public Service Administration have been working together to identify the scarce skills required by the labour market, for the public and private sectors. The key skills identified for focused attention relate mainly in Information, Communication and Technology, Financial Management and Engineering. The National Research Foundation and the National Students Financial Aid Scheme will be disbursing bursaries earmarking the skills that have been identified as scarce. The first batch of these bursaries will be awarded in March this year.

The Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) are also embarking on major skills development campaigns for people in employment. A total of 18 out of 25 SETAs have initiated programmes that are specifically targeting SMMEs to ensure that there is no employment sector that is left behind because they are small. SAMDI has also trained over 13 000 managers in a variety of management programmes.

We are putting in place mechanisms to monitor trends in the supply and demand for particular categories of skills. This information will be used for planning purposes and will also be made available to inform individual career choices and decisions regarding government subsidies for education and training. These measures are intended to reduce the major imbalances between supply and demand with regard to certain skills in the labour market. In addition, we will seek to promote entrepreneurship along with various employment strategies to enhance the absorptive capacity of the labour market for school leavers and other graduates as well as the unemployed.

An unavoidable reality is that the interface between demand and supply is always changing because the nature of work and the structure of the global and local economies are always changing. The notion of one-off training for a career for life is increasingly becoming an obsolete notion. Everyone must be a lifelong learner. The Education and Training system in this country is being developed to cater for lifelong learning.

The President stated in his State of the Nation address that our work related to the HRD strategy will be intensified this year. We will do this by intensifying our efforts in each of the five strategic objectives identified in the HRD strategy.

Firstly, we will continue with our efforts to improve the foundations of human development through early childhood development programmes, general education in schools as well as adult education and training for both unemployed and employed adults. The sustained improvement in the Matriculation results confirms that the schooling system has indeed been placed on a sound footing. Further strategies related to Whole School Evaluation and School Effectiveness are intended to ensure that these improvements are consolidated, sustained and deeply rooted in the system.

Secondly, we will work on securing a supply of skills, especially scarce skills, from the higher and further education and training bands of the NQF. The issue of school leavers who neither proceed to higher education nor join the employment sector remains a serious challenge for the country.

We have embarked on comprehensive programmes for the restructuring of the Further and Higher Education Institutional landscapes. These measures will result in an improvement in the efficiencies and responsiveness of these institutions and, thereby, enhance their contribution to the HRD strategy of this country.

Thirdly, we will increase the number of employers and workers who participate in quality lifelong learning. The learnership system gives employers an incentive to undertake more training. The system also intends to lay a basis for expanded self-employment by exposing more people to skills and work experience as a precursor to later entrepreneurship of their own. We will undertake this year, as required by the President, to ensure that funds allocated to the National Skills Fund, Umsobomvu, infrastructure and the employment subsidy are spent - in the words of the President - "...with the efficiency demanded by the actual needs of our society".

Fourthly, our research and innovation strategies will be strengthened. We need to "grow the future" by understanding current trends and exploiting the opportunities that we see or that present themselves. Innovation and research is intended to convey this sense of urgency - that South Africa can 'design its own future' and take steps to move from where it is to where it wants to be with careful research and development strategies and by unleashing the creativity of its citizens. In the context of increasing trade and financial globalisation it is innovation and intellectual property that bestows enormous competitiveness.

When the Minister of Labour and I launched this strategy last year, we called on all organs of state, civil society and private organisations to work together in creating a better life for all. We repeat today our call for the whole nation to work together for a better for life for all. In declaring this the Year of the Volunteer, the President has called for us as a nation to "...forge a massive movement of volunteers ...in the struggle for our own good and the good of humanity."

The government has ensured that ministries work together, in finding ways to align our policies and strategies to maximise the effect of service delivery on our people. We will also continue lobbying all citizens to do what they can to support the development of our people. The existing partnerships between government departments and private organisations will be strengthened.

I conclude by repeating what I said last year and many times today, the strategy is an ambitious one, it will not be possible to achieve the desired goals without collective effort and common purpose.

Forward to the Year of the Volunteer!

Thank you.

Issued by Ministry of Education

13 February 2002