Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana said, at the launch in Johannesburg, government has embraced the concept of employment and skills development agencies as one of the best ways to extend skills development to small enterprises and reach out to rural areas.
The ESDLE project, he added, will enable government to better understand the challenges of implementing these agencies and enable it to prepare new employment and skills development agency regulations and further national rollout.
Yesterday’s launch included ten sectoral ESDLE pilots and 11 provincial ESDLE pilots.
The sectoral ESDLEs are intermediate bodies that will operate nationally, across provincial boundaries, within the scope of a single sector – coinciding with the scope of the sector educational and training authority (Seta).
“These sectoral ESDLEs have a principal relationship with their Setas. The Setas will be encouraging smaller employers in their sector to take on learners with the assistance of ‘their’ ESDLE,” Mdladlana explained.
The provincial ESDLEs are intermediate bodies that will operate within a single province with a strong rural emphasis, but incorporating a range of small employers from a wide spectrum of sectors, which happen to be located within that particular province.
The provincial ESDLEs have already secured an agreement with those Setas to which the small enterprises in the province, that agreed to take on learners, belong.
“It is for this reason that my department has committed a total of R90-million under the National Skills Fund towards their administrative costs. These ESDLEs will still continue to receive individual learnership grants from their respective Setas,” Mdladlana pointed out.
Collectively, the ESDLEs are expected to take on some 11 000 learners.
Currently, the State’s achievements in terms of learnership intake, in learnerships and apprenticeships, at the end March stood at 64 000 learners.
Mdladlana said he was confident that, once the figures for April and May are collated, government will reach its target of 72 000 learners.
“It is my belief that, by creating these agencies, we will be in a position to boost and consolidate these partnerships towards achieving our next target, namely that of 80 000 learners in learnerships by March 2005,” Mdladlana said.
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