Master of Ceremonies - Ms Nongcebo McKenzie
Cllr James Nxumalo - His Worship the Mayor of eThekwini Municipality,
Commander Tsietsi Mokhele - CEO: South African Maritime Safety Authority
Mr Malcolm Sodalay - Chairperson of the Ethekwini Maritime Cluster
Mr Simon Ndukwana - Acting CEO Transport Education and Training Authority
Ms Brenda Ntombela - Head of Secretariat: Human Resources Development Council of South Africa
Ms Ruth Bhengu - Honourable MP, The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Transport
Mr Mike Mabuyakhulu - Honourable MEC for Economic Development and Tourism in KwaZulu -Natal
Mr Desmond Golding - Head of Department: Economic Development and
Tourism, KwaZulu -Natal
Representatives from Government, Industry and Organised Labour within the Industry
Young Men and Women
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good evening
It gives me great pleasure to address you this evening, at the National Maritime Careers Expo and National Maritime Job Summit being held during Maritime Week, not because of the Gala Dinner but because you are discussing something that is of priority to Government, namely economic growth, employment and skills. I want to congratulate the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) in providing this platform for employers in the maritime industry, government, job seekers, organised labour and recruitment agencies to discuss mutually beneficial, experiences and challenges.
SAMSA made a very revealing presentation to the Human Resource Development Council of South Africa chaired by the Deputy President of the Republic of South Africa recently. In this presentation they highlighted a key fact that many were not aware of, namely that South Africa does not own a single merchant vessel and therefore it is very difficult to provide on the job training to our cadets in training.
Clearly this cannot persist and as part of Government’s Strategic Infrastructure Projects, that includes its commitment to invest in mass and bulk infrastructure, including logistics infrastructure of roads, rail and ports, the skills needs for this infrastructure development will be tremendous, not only for building the infrastructure but also in operating and maintaining it. The envisaged deep sea port at the old Durban airport is a case in point. I am sure that with regards to our future growth plans, cognisance needs to be taken of growing South African owned and operated merchant fleets.
I understand that SAMSA’s ultimate goal is the transformation of the Maritime Sector, which includes creating an understanding and an awareness in South Africa that the focus should not only be on complying with the national or international standards of safety, but also on a range of other aspects that include growing and developing the maritime economy and therefore the maritime skills base. We were thus honoured last year in partnering with SAMSA and the Human Resources Development Council of South Africa (HRDCSA) to host the first Maritime Skills Summit in Richard’s Bay, KwaZulu-Natal, in September 2011.
I am extremely pleased to be associated with an initiative, driven by one of the most strategic entities of our public sphere, whose work is beginning to challenge our society to broaden its horizons in so far as economic activity is concerned. I am glad to see that government’s policy pronouncements on diversifying the country’s economy, beneficiation of natural resource and building of critical skills to respond thereto, is grabbed and implemented with speed and immense enthusiasm by the implementing agencies and various stakeholders. This speaks to a new form of cadreship, activism of a new, yet progressive order.
I would like to quote a paragraph from an article I read when the SAMSA launched its centre for the Seafarer in Durban: “On 18 December 2008, the vessel Kingfisher capsized and 14 fishermen died. In June 2009, the vessel Mendi capsised in East London, killing fishermen on board. In June 2010, its owner abandoned the vessel MV Hector, the crew was stranded on board, one crew member with a broken arm.”
There was a note, “We have not been paid for three months, I am Ghanaian crew, I have broken arm, I want to go home, please help”. It turns out the vessel had broken down every single day for 30 days from its trip from East Africa to the Middle East. The crew was left abandoned by the vessel’s owners.
The article further states “Mokhele cited some of the challenges faced by the maritime industry in getting more recruits were due to a lack of capacity at universities and a general lack of knowledge about the industry” - end quote.
It is on this note, that I would like to signal an understanding of the challenges that we are faced with in this country and that we must act fast and in co-operation if we are to make a difference to the millions of young people and adults out there, but also to achieve better outcomes in skills development and produce a skilled and capable workforce for inclusive economic growth.
As part of addressing the above and other challenges we, as government, signed a Skills Accord together with labour, business and community constituencies at National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC). Please study this accord as your good efforts need to be guided and take forward this Accord. Through this Accord we want to turn every workplace into a training space. By the same token, we want our public sector institutions and entities to be torchbearers in the revival of training capacity of our country.
It is a shame that an industrialised country like ours, with such levels of sophistication in the various economic sectors, has paid such minute attention to the building of the public capacity to train for so many years. The ability of our country to sustain reasonable growth levels that can absorb the millions of unemployed heavily depends on the ability of the public system to churn out substantial numbers of appropriately skilled individuals, on a consistent basis.
Training in its nature, is not a very profitable activity and on top of that, it is an activity that requires tolerance and patience, for good results. These attributes are an anti-thesis for profit seeking ventures, hence training and skills development cannot be left to the whims of the market.
I am extremely pleased that this initiative and your career expo seeks to make sector skills training and development a national priority especially in the Marine Sector, as one of South Africa’s critical economic sector that has forever experienced a dire skills shortage, yet with an enormous job creation prospect, both nationally and internationally.
Although the country has seen some recovery in job creation during 2011, employment has not yet returned to the level it was at its peak in 2008, and the unemployment rate still remains high at over 24%as per the latest official statistics. The funds invested in job creation by the country and the predictions of employing 332 000 people as a result thereof is a positive sign that South Africa is moving towards its goal of creating five million jobs by 2020.
However, more rapid job creation is needed. Businesses need to look at the incentives which government offers, which will assist companies in creating employment opportunities whilst simultaneously benefitting the company. This is one of the many concrete initiatives that government puts out its hand to other important role players in our economy in search of meaningful partnerships for sustainable economic development.
In addition to the incentive initiatives of government, I must hasten to mention that the South African Maritime Safety Authority (SAMSA) has entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with my Department to implement skills development programmes in the maritime sector with support from the National Skills Fund. This initiative will benefit 647 unemployed youth and graduates over a 3 year period to the value of R93, 6 million. Among others, the project will focus on cadetship and marine engineering.
I need to mention that this project will increase the output of seafarers, including unemployed graduates to maritime professions, achieving over 45 000 jobs within the maritime sector over 8 years, as a ripple-effect thereon.
There has also been close engagement with SAMSA in the recent weeks regarding implementation of maritime programmes in Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. I am told that SAMSA will share these plans with you at this summit.
With regards to the on-going partnership between the Authority and Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET), the University Branch of the DHET and SAMSA jointly organised a workshop on 18 April 2012. The purpose of the workshop was to create a platform for engagement with key role players from both the university and industry in relation to maritime specific and maritime related education and training needs and opportunities.
It is foreseen that discussions will lead to the identification of relevant academic programmes that can be offered to support the scarce skills needs in the maritime industry. The DHET has compiled an Action Plan from the recommendations and suggestions made in the workshop in to take the process forward.
Most assuredly, this programme offers great hope for the country. These skills are direly needed and everything should be done in our power to ensure the success thereof.
The establishment of DHET created the opportunity to build and sustain a single, coherent, differentiated and highly articulated post-school education and training system. Education and training are crucial elements for the transformation of South African society and economic outlook. It is ultimately the task of the Department to do all in its power to develop a skilled and capable workforce to support an inclusive growth path.
As a country, in spite of the billions of rands that have been spent on education, training and skills development, we are sitting with over 3 million young people who are not in employment, education and/or any form of training, with no physical or mental disability, except for a few.
Collectively, we have a responsibility to respond to the plight of these young people and the generations that will follow them. It is quite clear that most prescriptions that have been suggested by the neo-liberal world have been self-serving and ineffective to our acute unemployment realities. New solutions are required. Such solutions must be created within the means and the resources that our country is endowed with, including water resources.
Our country is endowed with almost 3 000 km of seacoast, extremely underutilised. The cost of protecting these waters runs way over R37 billion annually, protection that our country guarantees in terms of the internationally binding treaties, yet what the country extracts in terms of its GDP is a mere fraction relative to what it spends in maintaining and protecting these waters.
Though up to 98% of trade between South Africa and its partner countries are seaborne, "maritime career opportunities” remain largely untapped due to lack of awareness amongst South Africans. We should be preoccupied with finding ways and means to address this problem.
Economic development depends both on innovation and technology absorption. A shortage of high-level skills has been a hindrance for both innovation and technology absorption in South Africa. Investment in knowledge generation has substantially increased since 1994, to levels three times higher in real terms than they were in the mid-1990s. This includes investment from government and business. Skills shortages have impacted on the capacity to undertake in-depth and ground-breaking research and development to compete in global markets. Most importantly, our ability to innovate as a resourced country is severely undermined.
Given the critical skills shortage in the country, I must re-emphasise that it cannot be government’s sole responsibility to address the problem and provide answers. All stakeholders need to address the problems creatively.
Very specific challenges face our society, especially the unemployed out of school youth and graduates.
If businesses were to relax the need for experience as a requirement for job applicants and instead offer training to “green” employees, companies will be able to receive incentives and allow for more employment opportunities which, in turn, will enable them to contribute to skills development and improving the lives of many South Africans, in-house training allows for specific skills development as needed by the organisation which means that trainees are immediately able to contribute to the growth of the organisation, and in turn, the economy.
Unemployment and resultant poverty is a grave issue in South Africa and we need to move away from debate and get into a sphere of action where business, together with government, are making a difference to the pace and dynamics of job creation across the length and breadth of our country.
I sincerely congratulate and commend SAMSA for making training and skills development an important pillar in your strategy.
This points to an awakening to the reality that the economic sector has an important role to play in building a cadre of highly skilled and professional young people. The ultimate goal, which will serve us all, is growth in employment and job opportunities in this sector, in fulfilment of the shared national agenda. I encourage and fully endorse this initiative, hoping that the spark created from this initiative will light many fires, especially in our youth to follow careers in this important economic sector.
Once more, our department welcomes this initiative and feels proud to work in partnership with SAMSA.
I thank you.
