Date: 06/04/2004
Source: Department of Labour
Title: M Mdladlana: Launch of ISSET SETA/Telkom learnership programme
KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF LABOUR, MP, MEMBATHISI MDLADLANA, TELKOM LEARNERSHIP LAUNCH IN THE ISSET SETOR, Sheraton Hotel, 6 April 2004
The CEO of Telkom, Mr Sizwe Nxasana
CEO of ISETT SETA, Mr Oupa Mopaki
Distinguished Guests
Programme Director
Ladies and Gentlemen
Friends and Comrades.
I am delighted to be with you today on this important occasion - to stand witness to the achievement of this key milestone - the beginning of a promising future for a group of previously unemployed young people as well as a group of existing workers whose careers are being catapulted forward by this exciting new opportunity.
In my work as the Minister of Labour, nothing gives me a greater sense of pleasure than seeing people's dreams fulfilled, especially young people who are full of dreams and potential to take on the world. You will forgive me for sounding so excited - for as a parent who wishes only the best for my children I can share in the excitement that the families of these young people must also be feeling.
As we savour this moment together let us not forget the President's Growth and Development Summit held in June last year that helped to focus all of our minds on the imperative to work together to find common solutions to our country's challenges, not least of which is the blight of youth unemployment. This occasion stands testimony to the commitments we made at that Summit, where we - labour, business, government and the community sector - signed an agreement to strengthen our partnership by accelerating the intake of new entrants into learnership programmes as a form of building skills and creating employment opportunities for our youth, and thereby contributing to the growth of our economy and the alleviation of poverty in our communities.
We undertook together with our social partners, not to sit on our laurels while our youth - matriculants and graduates alike - languish on the streets - and we undertook to provide our young people with opportunities to learn skills, which would help to make them more employable or more able to build employment for themselves.
I wish to commend Telkom for taking on the challenge - you are making a great start here today and I trust that as one of our biggest South African corporates, that this experience will be extremely positive and will prove to be but the beginning for you in this important area of people development. This is an example of a true "people's contract" between government, business, community and labour and it will hopefully lay the basis for further collaborative work in future for the development and betterment of this wonderful country of ours.
It is perhaps hard to believe that it is only three short years ago that I launched the country's first National Skills Development Strategy - a strategy that set our SETAs and levy / grant system, introduced a year earlier, to work on achieving a clearly articulated set of national priorities. Today we have evidence that the strategy is working, and by implication, so too are the institutions and incentives that we set into place to make all this possible. Without the grants that the levy makes possible, and without the work of the ISSET SETA Board and staff - none of this would be happening. Let us remember this when next we read the jibes of our detractors in the press! Today is evidence that our combined efforts have not been in vain - well done to the ISSET SETA team who have worked hard to make this possible.
The ISSET SETA's progress has been especially striking in relationship to the implementation of learnerships, with more than 3 000 learners already signed up for ICT learnerships - putting ISETT SETA almost 1 000 learners ahead of its March 2004 target, agreed with my department a year ago. Well done to the team. Now, through learnerships such as the one being launched today, the ISSET SETA is within easy reach of its total five-year target of 3 500 learners by March next year - thus contributing to our national target of 80 000 young unemployed people in learnerships next year.
Today we are celebrating the start of learnerships for some 360 learners in Telkom. These learners will be inducted into three different learnership programmes including the Telkom Call Centre Learnerships, where learners will be trained in the company's Centre for Learning and then placed for experiential learning at Telkom's Call Centres in Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Gauteng. I'm particularly pleased to hear of this, as my colleague the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, confidently informs me that this sector has a great potential to grow and provide many jobs in this country. To these learners I can only say that your future seems particularly bright.
Another group of learners will be placed on Project Management Learnerships, I'm told. This group consists of 100 existing Telkom workers who will be learning the skills they need to manage operational and business change. And yet a third group of learners will be embarking on a Graduate Internship Programme. This is very interesting; I'm told that Telkom aims to equip young unemployed science and engineering graduates with ICT competencies. This kind of bridging from learning to work will surely make all the difference to people who have already learnt so much, and who need only a small helping hand in order to be able to make a large contribution to the workplaces that they eventually enter. That programme will be kick-started in June 2004 with 100 learners I believe.
It is clear that once these people have acquired these skills they are not going to be the only one's to benefit. Telkom's needs these skills for it to do business. Learnerships are a classic "win-win" - as both business and learners will benefit.
But to the learners this is clearly a stepping-stone to a brighter future, and an opportunity that has sparked the smiles that we see in this room today. And I believe that at this rate we will easily have sparked the 80 000 smiles by March of next year which I targeted when I launched the National Skills Development Strategy back in 2001.
Indeed as South Africa prepares to celebrate 10 years of democracy; we can look back in pride on what has been achieved with regards to the implementation of the National Skills Development Strategy. This democracy might still be in its infant stages, yet we have set the benchmark in the world. Our country is looked upon as a leader amongst its peers. We are the envy of many nations, lest we forget that.
But a long road still lies ahead. The Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector in our country reflects the skewed landscape of ownership, control and access to resources between those who where advantaged and disadvantaged by the previous regime. A huge digital divide still exists between the rich and poor, black and white, rural and urban population in our country.
As we look at the skills strategy through the lens of this particular sector, it is clear that its ultimate goal must be to narrow and eventually to close this divide - on two fronts - both within the country and as well as between this country, and the continent of which it is part, and the more developed world more generally. And of course these two objectives are linked - it is through working internally that gradually our standing internationally will improve. We are not na
Source: Department of Labour
Title: M Mdladlana: Launch of ISSET SETA/Telkom learnership programme
KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE MINISTER OF LABOUR, MP, MEMBATHISI MDLADLANA, TELKOM LEARNERSHIP LAUNCH IN THE ISSET SETOR, Sheraton Hotel, 6 April 2004
The CEO of Telkom, Mr Sizwe Nxasana
CEO of ISETT SETA, Mr Oupa Mopaki
Distinguished Guests
Programme Director
Ladies and Gentlemen
Friends and Comrades.
I am delighted to be with you today on this important occasion - to stand witness to the achievement of this key milestone - the beginning of a promising future for a group of previously unemployed young people as well as a group of existing workers whose careers are being catapulted forward by this exciting new opportunity.
In my work as the Minister of Labour, nothing gives me a greater sense of pleasure than seeing people's dreams fulfilled, especially young people who are full of dreams and potential to take on the world. You will forgive me for sounding so excited - for as a parent who wishes only the best for my children I can share in the excitement that the families of these young people must also be feeling.
As we savour this moment together let us not forget the President's Growth and Development Summit held in June last year that helped to focus all of our minds on the imperative to work together to find common solutions to our country's challenges, not least of which is the blight of youth unemployment. This occasion stands testimony to the commitments we made at that Summit, where we - labour, business, government and the community sector - signed an agreement to strengthen our partnership by accelerating the intake of new entrants into learnership programmes as a form of building skills and creating employment opportunities for our youth, and thereby contributing to the growth of our economy and the alleviation of poverty in our communities.
We undertook together with our social partners, not to sit on our laurels while our youth - matriculants and graduates alike - languish on the streets - and we undertook to provide our young people with opportunities to learn skills, which would help to make them more employable or more able to build employment for themselves.
I wish to commend Telkom for taking on the challenge - you are making a great start here today and I trust that as one of our biggest South African corporates, that this experience will be extremely positive and will prove to be but the beginning for you in this important area of people development. This is an example of a true "people's contract" between government, business, community and labour and it will hopefully lay the basis for further collaborative work in future for the development and betterment of this wonderful country of ours.
It is perhaps hard to believe that it is only three short years ago that I launched the country's first National Skills Development Strategy - a strategy that set our SETAs and levy / grant system, introduced a year earlier, to work on achieving a clearly articulated set of national priorities. Today we have evidence that the strategy is working, and by implication, so too are the institutions and incentives that we set into place to make all this possible. Without the grants that the levy makes possible, and without the work of the ISSET SETA Board and staff - none of this would be happening. Let us remember this when next we read the jibes of our detractors in the press! Today is evidence that our combined efforts have not been in vain - well done to the ISSET SETA team who have worked hard to make this possible.
The ISSET SETA's progress has been especially striking in relationship to the implementation of learnerships, with more than 3 000 learners already signed up for ICT learnerships - putting ISETT SETA almost 1 000 learners ahead of its March 2004 target, agreed with my department a year ago. Well done to the team. Now, through learnerships such as the one being launched today, the ISSET SETA is within easy reach of its total five-year target of 3 500 learners by March next year - thus contributing to our national target of 80 000 young unemployed people in learnerships next year.
Today we are celebrating the start of learnerships for some 360 learners in Telkom. These learners will be inducted into three different learnership programmes including the Telkom Call Centre Learnerships, where learners will be trained in the company's Centre for Learning and then placed for experiential learning at Telkom's Call Centres in Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Gauteng. I'm particularly pleased to hear of this, as my colleague the Minister of Trade and Industry, Alec Erwin, confidently informs me that this sector has a great potential to grow and provide many jobs in this country. To these learners I can only say that your future seems particularly bright.
Another group of learners will be placed on Project Management Learnerships, I'm told. This group consists of 100 existing Telkom workers who will be learning the skills they need to manage operational and business change. And yet a third group of learners will be embarking on a Graduate Internship Programme. This is very interesting; I'm told that Telkom aims to equip young unemployed science and engineering graduates with ICT competencies. This kind of bridging from learning to work will surely make all the difference to people who have already learnt so much, and who need only a small helping hand in order to be able to make a large contribution to the workplaces that they eventually enter. That programme will be kick-started in June 2004 with 100 learners I believe.
It is clear that once these people have acquired these skills they are not going to be the only one's to benefit. Telkom's needs these skills for it to do business. Learnerships are a classic "win-win" - as both business and learners will benefit.
But to the learners this is clearly a stepping-stone to a brighter future, and an opportunity that has sparked the smiles that we see in this room today. And I believe that at this rate we will easily have sparked the 80 000 smiles by March of next year which I targeted when I launched the National Skills Development Strategy back in 2001.
Indeed as South Africa prepares to celebrate 10 years of democracy; we can look back in pride on what has been achieved with regards to the implementation of the National Skills Development Strategy. This democracy might still be in its infant stages, yet we have set the benchmark in the world. Our country is looked upon as a leader amongst its peers. We are the envy of many nations, lest we forget that.
But a long road still lies ahead. The Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector in our country reflects the skewed landscape of ownership, control and access to resources between those who where advantaged and disadvantaged by the previous regime. A huge digital divide still exists between the rich and poor, black and white, rural and urban population in our country.
As we look at the skills strategy through the lens of this particular sector, it is clear that its ultimate goal must be to narrow and eventually to close this divide - on two fronts - both within the country and as well as between this country, and the continent of which it is part, and the more developed world more generally. And of course these two objectives are linked - it is through working internally that gradually our standing internationally will improve. We are not na
Advertisement
EMAIL THIS ARTICLE SAVE THIS ARTICLE FEEDBACK
To subscribe email subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za or click here
To advertise email advertising@creamermedia.co.za or click here
