Honourable ministers
Representatives from labour, business and civil society
Council members
Welcome to the inaugural meeting of the Human Resource Development (HRD) Council. I would like to thank each one of you for honouring this invitation and agreeing to serve on the Human Resource Development Council.
This HRD Council, like similar structures of government, has been set up to contribute towards the attainment of our national goals which include reducing poverty and unemployment, promoting justice and social cohesion and improving national economic growth.
This council is established to provide an environment which promotes optimal participation of all stakeholders in the planning, stewardship, and monitoring and evaluation of human resource development activities in the country.
This collective is a medium for constant dialogue and consensus building among all of us as stakeholders, on all matters related to human resource development. The council is therefore an attempt to establish a coherent institutional mechanism for the various human resource initiatives.
We would lead the implementation of a joint initiative of government, organised business, organised labour, civil society, research and academic community, higher education institutions and to accelerate the provision of human resources of the country.
As we are gathered here honourable members, we all have an important role to play in improving the human resource of our country. Each one of you brings with them experience, expertise and knowledge in this area. This combined expertise is critical for our role as members of council.
Human Resource Development spans several domains, i.e. education, labour market, industry and society. Thus problems that are intrinsic to these domains cannot be reduced to one institution or policies of one government department or institution.
Rather they impact on the collective ensemble of institutions in the system and relate to a cross-sectoral basket of government policies, private sector initiatives, higher education and other academic institutions as well as society at large.
Together we should give momentum and support to the implementation of the various human resource development initiatives. The scope and importance of human resource development dictates that its success depends on the contribution and participation of all social partners.
As the council, we will align our efforts with those of like structures such as the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, National Planning Commission, Science and Technology, Basic Education, Higher Education and Training, etc. and draw on their work to avoid duplication of efforts and mission drift.
The primary responsibility of developing policies and providing the necessary human resource lies with the respective line departments and social partners. We have a huge amount of work to do. Each one of us represents a subsystem of human resource development. These subsystems have a critical role to play in improving our human resource development.
Within and between them there are challenges which we need to address.
The bottlenecks and logjams in the pipeline that leads to the inefficient channelling of young people from basic education to higher education to the labour market, represents one of the major challenges. Unblocking and removing these bottlenecks represents one of the major tasks of this council. Gathered here, we need to find solutions and look beyond ourselves as individuals and our constituencies.
Ladies and gentlemen, colleagues, we cannot deny that we have come a long way since our liberation from apartheid. We have achieved a great deal of success in breaking barriers. However, the majority of our people still face unbelievable obstacles that prevent them from leading economically productive lives.
Recent economic turmoil has impacted our nation dramatically. Over half a million people lost their jobs in the past year only. And many of our young people, with academic qualifications, remain unemployed because our skills supply does not match our labour market demands. An increasing portion of young people drop out of school and cannot find work.
It is our responsibility to bring about articulation between the various subsystems to allow for optimal achievement of systemic outcomes. We need to ensure that our human resources policies harmonise with economic development needs and opportunities, and that they are broad based and opportunity specific.
With the support of Minister of Higher Education and Training, who is the custodian of the Human Resource Development Strategy, I will lead from government side. Appropriate supporting structures will be set-up to support our work as council. The Minister and the Director-General of Higher Education will elaborate on these.
I am confident that as a collective through this council, we will together make a significant impact on improving the human resources of our country.
For comments please contact:
Vusi Mona
Cell: 082 047 2260
I thank you
Issued by: The Presidency
30 March 2010
Source: SAPA
