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The Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), an entity of the Department of Labour in partnership with the Manufacturing, Engineering and related SETA (Merseta) are set to spend over R 160 million in training and assisting artisans with entry and re-entry to the job market in the next three years.

This emerged during a meeting organised by the department held in Polokwane (Limpopo) on Thursday.

In her address to stakeholders from business, labour and government, Rachel Masha, Deputy Director for labour activation in UIF said “qualifying candidates who meet the requirement will be outsourced from the department’s Employment Service of South Africa (ESSA).

“The two parties brought heads together in order to raise this amount and fund this initiative. The only thing we need is fertile grounds to make this a possibility “hence we have decided to meet with you as employers so as to pave a smooth ride forward.

The ideal situation is to rope you in as employers to offer in-service (workplace) training to these learners (artisans) in order to be employed at the end of the day,” she said.

Vikesh Panday, Project Manager at Merseta, said “the initiative identified a need to increase skilled artisans and this will be addressed through providing adequate funding to employers to enable increased artisans training support to national imperatives for artisans.”

“For employers to participate, they must be registered with Merseta and be in the manufacturing, engineering and related services.” He said.

Panday called on employers to bring forward people that need to be trained in order to take an advantage of the R 112 500 grand that is offered per artisans.

One of the biggest manufacturing employers in the province requested that “during when we offer these in-service training to the artisans, proper background checks must be done to avoid hiring wrong people.

Masha said priority will be given to people who are contributing to the UIF “because the same money to be used for the funding of the initiatives comes from their contributions.”