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30 August 2004

Programme Director
The Premier of North West, Ms Edna Molewa
Honourable MEC for Finance and Economic Affairs, Mr Darky Africa
Members of the North West Provincial Government present here today
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen.

I feel very honoured and privileged to be recognised as one of those Ministers, who are leading a ministry that is ensuring harmony and peace in the labour market. The demand for the services of my department has grown tremendously. We are faced with a “crisis of success”.

As a result of our advocacy and education campaigns, members of the public have become more aware of their rights, and are increasingly turning to the department for help. Developing and investing in our people, is a subject that is very close to my heart.

I accepted to speak on this topic because I 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:

* Halving unemployment;
* Halving poverty; and
* Concurrently, reducing inequity in employment and asset ownership.

In the five and half years that have passed since the Skills Development Act was passed, literally millions of our people have been trained under its banner. Many of these people have been workers who keep our economy running in all the platinum and other mines, offices, shops, farms and factories of our nation. With training they have received we believe that productivity and competitiveness of their workplaces has been improved as well as their own employment security and their livelihood. 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. Programme Director, the skills revolution that our legislation was intended to unleash is indeed taking place.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Premier and her Executive Council for organising this important conference and begin to grapple with some of the difficult challenges we face as a country. Our starting point and experiences that we have gained during the Growth and Development Summit before June 2003, has included an analysis of the broader strategies that together with our social partners this government has put in place to achieve the national goals that I outlined earlier.

These national goals are most easily understood in three broad groups: the first two relate to economic and social strategies, roughly addressing the first two national goals, whilst the third set of strategies, comprising employment equity and broad based black economic empowerment strategies, address the final national goal. It is assumed that collectively these strategies will deliver the national goals that I have indicated.

Having identified these three groups of strategies, we believe that each of these groups consists of a series of inter-related sectoral strategies whose principal statement is national, but whose operational expression is at provincial and local levels. Each sectoral strategy is defined in terms of a series of specific programmes each with a set of projects.

The implementation of the programmes and projects requires people with skills. These skills are in the first instance expressed in terms of qualified people capable of filling specified jobs, such as, high-level, experienced managers, professionals and paraprofessionals of this or that specific type, and then finally the operational folk who do the more routine work. The projects might even be defined in terms of ratios: so many professionals linked to do so many technicians for each project.

Whilst it is tempting to use these numbers to determine the training required, two factors needs to be taken into account: firstly, there may already be employed or unemployed people with the required skills in the area or willing and able to move to the area to work; and secondly; the project may be delayed or cancelled and then the trained people would have no clear site to practice. I would urge the North West Provincial Government to take a number of additional steps to cushion learners in such eventualities:

* I would urge the province to develop a list of the skills you require to be expressed at the level of ' occupations' and not of 'jobs' as the basis for planning training. This will give the people trained greater mobility and employability. We have identified scarce skills at a national level however we are still in a process of reviewing the National Qualification Framework with our colleagues in the National Department of Education.

* Our aim is to bring all learning under a single framework. We want to widen opportunities for learning and enable prior learning to be recognised so that workers and learners could advance either in education and training or in their career paths. The South African education and training systems has to be transformed. At the moment there is proliferation of bodies responsible for standard setting and quality assurance. There is lack of co-ordination and leadership. And this is causing a lot of confusion.

* We are considering developing a register of occupations to guide people. Such a list would have to be updated continuously to take into account, changes that occur so rapidly in the world of work;

* The list of occupational skills required should be checked against information on the availability of such skills. We may not be having the best and accurate statistics within the Department of Labour Provincial offices and Labour Centres; we are however trying our level best to have unemployment people register with our offices. By the end of this year, Umsobomvu Youth Fund will be operating through our Labour Centres over and above the other outlets that they have. I am confident that if you as the province can assist us in convincing the young and old unemployed people to register with our offices, you will be in a position to know the kind of skills that reside in this province. An agreed approach should then be adapted to defining the 'gap' between those required and those already available;

* The list should aggregate the skills across the various programmes and projects, and should not be unique to one intervention-unless that intervention is a 'dead certainty' and is of such a scale as to require dedicated attention.
And the aggregated list should signal demand trends likely over a five to ten year time period so that labour market trends in demand can be anticipated (even though an approach to slight over-supply might be adopted to manage associated risks).

On the basis of this information, and an assessment of available resources, I believe an agreement should be entered into between the economic sectoral strategy drivers and the skills implementers, this include the 25 SETAs that I am told, are beginning to open their provincial offices in this and other provinces, and the related colleges, universities of technology, private accredited providers and emerging providers on skills delivery.

I am sure you will agree with me that, for this approach to be practically implemented, each sectoral strategy needs to be championed by a single 'authority' such as a government department, or an economic sectoral cluster that is recognised as responsible for its implementation even if such implementation requires it to collaborate with others. This 'authority' should then be responsible for entering a 'skills agreement' with the responsible SETA or skills authority for the delivery of the list of required skills.

Over the past years, there has been some relative autonomy at both provincial and local levels, where further economic, social and equity planning also took place for very good reasons of course.

However if we are to ensure that the National Skills Development Strategy, the work of the SETAs and those training initiatives that are located in our provincial offices respond accordingly to and support your plans, there is a need for those sectoral strategy champions at national levels, to 'map' their plans, and thereby ensure that a coherent set of signals are being forwarded to the skills development community. Coordination across government can be difficult; however it must happen, it can be done with some pain of course. If this can happen, I am sure it will go a long way in assisting us to direct the kind of resources we command under the skills levy to meet your needs.

Programme Director, on the 11- 13 October 2004, I will be launching a new National Skills Development Strategy that will guide and direct the work of SETAs and all projects funded under the National Skills Fund for the next five years. I will also table a report of our achievements to date and also acknowledge those provinces and SETAs that did their best in this process. I am hoping that a delegation from the North West will join me in this occasion.

I did receive a very good report on how the North West engaged with the Draft National Skills Development Strategy 2005-2009 consultative processes that was held in the province. I am told that the National Skills Authority will have their last consultations on the strategy from 8 to 10 September 2004. I hope that as a province, you will make your voice heard as part of government constituency in that process.

Programme Director, I am also happy to acknowledge the collective efforts of all South Africans, in responding to the plight of our young people. I have recently received a report on our flagship Learnership and Apprenticeship for unemployed young men and women below the age of 35. By the end of July 2004, we had 75 014 registered learners. With the help of the 21 Employment and Skills Development Lead Employer Agencies and of course the North West government, we will exceed the 80 000 targets for 31 March 2005.

Let me conclude by cautioning against engaging in big philosophical debates because our people are not interested in those debates. We must produce an action programme that is doable with concrete targets and timeframes. Our people are not expecting less and we must not disappoint them. Together we will conquer the challenge of unemployment and poverty but it will take hard work and sacrifices from all of us.

Let me once again wish you all the best in your endeavour to develop a coherent Growth and Development Strategy for the Platinum Province.

I thank you.

Issued by: Department of Labour
30 August 2004
Source: Department of Labour (http://www.labour.gov.za)