M Mdladlana: Opening of Lekamva Academy Construction Centre of
Excellence

27 February 2009

Master of ceremonies
Chairperson and the Deputy Chairperson of the Council
Leadership of the National Black Contractors and Allied Trades Forum
Leadership of the Northlink College
The CEO and Leadership of the Construction SETA
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

I am delighted to celebrate with you this particularly exciting occasion to
launch the Lekamva Academy Construction Council of Excellence.

The African National Congress (ANC) government through the Department of
Labour, in partnership with stakeholders, were indeed visionary when we
engineered in our National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS) 2005/10, the need
to promote Institutes of Sectoral or Occupational Excellence (ISOEs). An ISOE
is a hub of relevant actors, industry, providers, and our skills
intermediaries, the Service Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) who
act collectively bring their strengths and resources together to ensure a
seamless transition between learning and employment. By their very nature ISOEs
being based on partnerships, provides for skills development which is
meaningful to all the parties, clear exit opportunities to the learners, and
are able to multiply our efforts tenfold! That is why they are labelled
“Excellent”!

I therefore wish to start by commending the partnership by the Black
Construction Council, the National Black Contractors and Allied Trades Forum
(NABCAT), the Northlink College, and the Construction Education and Training
Authority (CETA) to establish the Lemkava Academy Construction Centre of
Excellence” here in Belhar Cape Town. My intelligence informed me that CETA
contributed in the region of about R30,6 milion. I am sure somebody will tell
me how much or in what way other partners are going to contribute in this
process. I also want to commend you for specifically choosing to address the
skills development needs of previously disadvantaged sectors of mainly blacks
(i.e coloureds, blacks and Indians), youth, disabled, and the unemployed.

This initiative is testimony to the dynamic nature of the South African
skills development environment. Even though, a decade ago we inherited a labour
market that was segregated, with very low skills levels, coupled with an
incoherent approach to skills development, we are now in a position to record
albeit with challenges, an established skills development system. In fact, our
Skills Development framework, and its supporting systems, the Sector Education
and Training Authority (SETAs) and the National Science Foundation (NSF),
remain on a continuing path of improvement. Beyond the successes achieved with
NSDS we already celebrated the success of NSDS during our skills conference
held during October 2008. The NSDS 2005/10 fourth year implementation report
suggest that we will exceed most of the targets that we have set for ourselves,
come March 2010.

Sadly, however, so many, and very transformative interventions, our success
stories during our decade of skills development history are not well known and
therefore are not publicly celebrated. They remain in some obscure places,
hidden quietly in the reports of the department and those of SETA and
individual companies. Of course isolated unsavoury stories coming from our
ranks tend to occupy the headlines.

Just less than eight months ago, everybody was on a hype about skills
development shortage in the country. Various experts that emerged from nowhere,
were giving us lectures on the best interventions, the diaspora, making the
immigration laws very friendly to attract scarce skills etc. Today we have a
recession and none of those experts are assisting us to encourage companies to
accelerate training during this period to prepare ourselves for the future
because recession gives us the opportunity to train. I am now convinced that
some of them think that developing human being skills is like putting a flour
mixture or dough in an oven and set the correct temperature and time.
Developing a human being’ skills require time and this is the best opportunity
we have instead of laying workers off blaming the recession. What I know is
that when the situation changes, the very same companies will need these
workers and by then there will be no time to train them. I know that the next
thing, the skills development interventions will again be under a new scrutiny
and new experts will also emerge again.

We have listened attentively to criticisms levelled against SETAs, the
outcry to ramp up delivery against scarce skills, the need to improve and
safeguard quality, and pleas to expand the delivery of skills programmes in
order to increase our efforts. In this regard my department set out during 2007
and 2008 to review the SDA, largely, in order to effect technical adjustments,
which once implemented will result in a much more flexible and broadened policy
framework that will allow implementers of skills development in South Africa to
accelerate and increase the delivery of skills, in particular scarce skills.
Our efforts were not in vain as the President of the republic finally assented
to the proposed amendments into law by signing the Skills Development Amendment
Act 2008 on the 1st December 2008.

Implementers in the construction sector such as yourselves, are encouraged
to take particular note of the improvements in the SD Amendment Act, 2008 to
accelerated development of artisans in the country and institutes of
occupational excellence.

I am also very excited that the Act provides a major revolution in our
entire education and training system. The establishment of the Quality Council
for Trades and Occupations (QCTO) will fill a missing link that we have debated
for years. It will provide us for the first time, with a coherent framework for
an alternative learning system that combines both theory and its application.
It will provide us with an opportunity to develop qualifications that start
from a sweeper to a specialist level. It will enable us to realize a dream that
was adopted at the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) congress as
far back as 1989. To make it possible for a sweeper to become an engineer if
they are determined to learn.

We are confident that, by these improvements provided in the SDA Act, 2008,
our skills development system will remain on a growth trajectory. We now have a
system that is better geared to respond more robustly to the demand for
qualified artisans, and that can take us into the next five years of the NSDS.
We are most certainly on a consolidatory path, going forward!

These changes in legislation are of course good news for sectors such as the
construction that our government committed to continue to support despite
current the economic recession. We know that there is currently a demand for
artisans and technicians. In particular, the current CETA Student Sponsorship
Programme (SSP) (2008) reflects a demand for artisan skills, such as
bricklayers, carpenters, diesel motor mechanics, earth moving operators,
fitters and turners, plumbers, plant mechanics and mechanical engineering
technicians. The demand for skills in this sector emanates from the sustained
economic growth which the country experienced up to recently, our 2010 Soccer
World Cup preparations and our Accelerated Shared Growth Initiative (ASGI-SA)
programmes to grow the country’s infrastructure. I am not suggesting that the
construction sector, like other seriously affected sectors, should not continue
to make adjustment to the industry’s plans. The CETA including all other SETAs,
should also continue to make similar assessment on their SSPs and reposition
themselves within the context of the current economic challenges.

I want to make a specific call today to the construction sector players to
put the sector interests first before their group, government tenders or
individual interests. The CETA should continue to concern itself with the needs
for scarce and critical skills in this sector and to ensure that learners
participating in various construction learning programmes have a better
prospect for formal or self employment when exciting this learning. I have been
involved in meetings with various groupings in the construction sector more
than any other economic sector. I have read very bad news about how this sector
continued to conduct itself be it skills development, collective bargaining
arrangements, its occupational health and safety record etc. I think it is time
that we bring all this to a stop, and that all parties within this sector, i.e.
Africans, coloureds, Indians, whites etc, begin to hold your hands to work
together in assisting us to solve some of these problems.

Despite all these problems, I remain appreciative of the role played by the
stakeholders, and role players such as yourselves in contributing to the
successes so far achieved under our skills development interventions. During
2009, let us continue to work together and pull up our sleeves to bring the
last year of NSDS II to a resounding success! But let us not stop there, lets
us ensure that NSDS III consolidate on the gains made in NSDS I and II.

I look forward to the graduation ceremony of the first learners to receive
their qualifications from Lekamva Academy Construction Council of Excellence. I
wish you well in the partnership that you have commenced hope that it will make
a difference in skilling our country’s workforce.

I thank you

Issued by: Department of Labour
27 February 2009
Source: Department of Labour (http://www.dol.gov.za)