Liaison, Roads and Transport at the launch of the Eastern Cape Transport Month
Programme and Transport Sector Career Exhibition, Bhisho Airport
1 October 2007
"Breeding the new transport sector cadres"
Let me first take this opportunity to welcome all of you to this glittering
occasion, which seeks to empower our youth and pave way for a brighter future
for our nation. As we traverse in this social transformation process of our
revolution, we have a responsibility to create space for the previously
marginalised groups of our society, with a particular focus on youth, to ensure
that they are sufficiently empowered to participate actively in the economy of
this country.
Since the advent of democracy, visible and decisive advances have been made
by the democratic state to realise this objective, but shortage of technical
skills continues to undermine our progress. These scarce skills are a major
challenge, especially in the engineering, rail, aviation, maritime and
transport economics fields. As government, we have resolved to embark
vigorously on programmes that seek to attain such skills.
The Department of Roads and Transport has established partnerships with
various stakeholders, particularly institutions of higher learning, for
building and growing transport sector skills. This Transport Sector Careers
Exhibition forms part of a multi-pronged approach that we have adopted to
ensure that we mobilise our youth, especially from our rural communities, to
consider the transport sector as a career path.
We want to effectively end the scourge of poverty in the Eastern Cape
through investing on our youth. We have realised the fact that central to any
effort to overcome the scourge of poverty is the development of the human
potential of our people through education and skills development. We have
initiated a Maths and Science project to assist our learners from grade 10 to
12 with advance training in partnership with the institutions of higher
learning such as the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Nelson Mandela
Bay, Walter Sisulu University in the OR Tambo District and University of Fort
Hare in the Nkonkobe Municipality.
Every weekend and holidays, these learners have access to science
laboratories and get advanced training from their tutors. For this project, I
would like to specially commend the support from Engen, because the company has
been partnering with us since the inception. We hope that other private sector
institutions would emulate this example, as we have committed ourselves to
further expand this programme to Cala in the Chris Hani District and Mdantsane
in the Buffalo City area. This project has already yielded results, as it
enabled close to 400 Eastern Cape youth to access bursaries from the department
since 2003 to study transport related courses.
Government, both nationally and provincially, has set an annual economic
growth target of six percent and we have realised that we need to invest
heavily in education and skills in order to achieve that target. Through
government's Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa), we are
urgently required to address the following:
* high level, world class managerial, planning and engineering skills
* town, city and regional planning skills
* artisan and technician skills
* management and planning skills for public health and education
* mathematics, science, Information Communication Technology (ICT) and language
competence teaching in public schools.
Targets have been set at an additional 1 000 graduate engineers a year and
50 000 new artisans by 2010. This means that institutions of higher learning
must generate an average of 2 500 graduate engineers a year. A public private
partnership is required to ensure that there is effective mentoring of these
young engineers from graduation process to becoming a professional engineer and
retention of these professionals in practice.
The question of unemployed graduates remains a challenge in a number of
ways. It highlights the mismatch between skills supply and demand in the
economy. As a consequence of the apartheid education system, the historically
disadvantaged institutions continue to generate a surplus of skills with no
demand in the economy, which then requires aggressive re-skilling programmes.
For the past four months, we have recruited 56 unemployed graduates through our
internship programme, who are now working in various directorates within the
department, including my own office.
Through our learnerships programme, we have further recruited 70 youths as
traffic officers and 50 of them have already joined the Provincial Traffic
Officers. A recent assessment on local government performance showed an
unacceptable skills shortage, particularly engineering skills, in our
municipalities. A recent comprehensive survey by the South African Institute of
Civil Engineering showed that 79 of the 231 local municipalities in the country
had no civil engineers, technologists or technicians. Our Provincial Growth and
Development Plan compel government and its social partners to embark vigorously
on programmes that seek to attain such skills.
It is interesting to see institutions of higher learning participating in
this exhibition as they have been identified as key partners in building that
capacity. As we prepare for the 2010 Fifa World Cup, government is spending
billions of rands in infrastructure, which includes stadiums, roads, rail,
airports and other facilities that would contribute in making the tournament a
success and present our people with a lasting legacy.
This massive investment requires technical expertise and we have a
collective responsibility to provide that capacity. We have decided to host
this event at this airport to show our youth a possible new career path in the
aviation sector. We are spending R100 million on the upgrading of this airport
and more than 100 local people are working here. This airport has been
earmarked for 2010 Fifa World Cup and we believe that more jobs will be created
when the airport is operating fully, possibly by April 2008.
An important goal is to link Port Elizabeth and Mthatha via Bhisho with the
service geared for faster movement between the three areas, which have been
identified for the 2010 World Cup. In the main, we want Bhisho Airport to
become an Aviation Training School. We are making visible and decisive advances
in the opening of opportunities in the rail sector, which I believe that many
young people of the Eastern Cape stand to gain.
Our "Back to Rail" strategy will be supported by a massive capacity building
programme, which we are going to run jointly with the Walter Sisulu University,
Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality, Transport Education Training
Authority (TETA) and rail experts from Netherlands at the Rail Centre of
Excellence that we are going to open. These are some of the opportunities for
young engineers to test their skills and talents, while simultaneously changing
the face of our province and growing the economy. In conclusion, I would like
to declare this Career Exhibition Open.
I thank you.
Issued by: Department of Transport, Eastern Cape Provincial Government
1 October 2007
