Address by the Minister for Public Service and Administration, Ms Ayanda Dlodlo at the official launch of the graduate recruitment scheme, University of Johannesburg
Vice Chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, Prof Tshilidzi Marwala
Esteemed Executives of the University of Johannesburg
Fellow Partners in Youth Development
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen
Firstly let me extend my words of appreciation to the Vice Chancellor for agreeing to host and partner with us on such an important initiative, which is a national priority for our government.
In less than a year from now, we will be preparing for the sixth democratically elected administration to take forward the expectations and aspirations of the citizens of our country. We need to continually remind ourselves of chapter 10 of our Constitution, which articulates the basic values and principles governing public administration. The values and principles are a mix of compliance, learning and developmental aspirations. This requires us to meet people’s needs through authentic participatory processes that realize in practice a developmental public administration. Or in the language of the National Development Plan: “build a capable developmental state, which together with an active citizenry leads a relentless drive against poverty, unemployment and social inequality”.
The NDP further points to the need to develop the capabilities of the historically disadvantaged to take advantage of the opportunities that democracy, openness and the economy can afford.
Active citizenry and social activism is necessary for democracy and development to flourish. The state cannot merely act on behalf of the people – it has to act with the people, working together with other institutions to provide opportunities for the advancement of all communities.
This means that education, training and skills development are critical as it affords the opportunity for society to learn and progress. There is no doubt that education and skills development are key to driving socio-economic growth so that we can achieve the goal of substantially reducing poverty, inequality and unemployment.
This is more so, if we redouble our efforts in nurturing the skills and talent of our youth to prepare them for their much needed contribution towards building the country’s economy. For the public service in particular, we require their agility and innovative thinking as trailblazers of the 4th Industrial Revolution. The Public Service needs professionalization and cutting edge ways of doing business and the youth is a repository of such skills.
So we meet today, in partnership with the University of Johannesburg and various other players who are critical in the task of skills development in our country but most importantly, in the drive to attract and retain skills particularly from the youth of our country, to launch a very important initiative, the Public Service Graduate Recruitment Scheme.
This scheme, is one of the practical initiatives proposed by the National Development Plan towards the achievement of a goal to make the Public Service a career of choice. As we are all aware, the National Development Plan highlights the importance of adopting a more long term approach to developing the skills and professional ethos that underpin a development oriented public service.
It is a well-known fact that young people seeking to enter a career in the public service often find it difficult to identify a suitable entry point in the system. It is also true that departments struggle to identify and develop young talent from the ranks of the youth and unemployed graduates across the country.
The introduction of this scheme therefore will provide a more coherent entry route for young public servants and will provide targeted training and help to build the skills and professional ethos required for the sector. We are particularly excited by this venture because it realizes the need for government to be proactive about producing and retaining the skills that it needs.
The other important feature of this scheme is that it does not seek to replace or obliterate currently existing schemes or recruitment mechanisms, such as internships, artisan programmes and other youth development initiatives in the sector. Instead, it seeks to consolidate and complement these so that we have a broader platform for skills recruitment and retention in the Public Service.
In this regard I would like to welcome the presence and participation of the National Youth Development Agency, the South African Unemployed Graduates Association, Various Departmental Graduate Schemes present here, the SETAs, our International Partners and other important role players.
Your collective presence here also gives credence to the vision of the National Human Resource Development Council, which envisions a collaborative effort between government and its social partners in the skills development space.
We must also hasten to mention that the skills envisaged through these programmes will not be solely preserved for the Public Service. Our stated objective in the National Development Plan is that the Public Service has a responsibility to build the skills base for its capacity needs both now and in the future.
These skills should contribute towards employment creation and ensure that public sector workplaces become training spaces where entrants are adequately supported in order to develop their skills for employment within and outside the Public Service.
So our collaboration with initiatives such as the Youth Employment Service through the Department of Higher Education and Training and other initiatives by the National Youth Development Agency, the South African Unemployed Graduates Association and our various International partners is located within this national context for skills development.
As the Public Service in particular, we are bound by our commitment in the National Human Resource Development Strategy that we will ensure that the public sector has the capacity to meet the strategic priorities of the South African Developmental State. As Minister for the Public Service and Administration, I would therefore like to make the call for departments in the Public Service to participate in this important scheme to recruit and nurture young talent in their various competencies.
Today, we have laid the broad foundation which is a stepping stone towards the achievement of our golden goal of building an efficient, effective and development oriented Public Service. In addition to this Central Graduate Recruitment Scheme, we must support various skills planning interventions by critical sectors of our economy. For example, the AGRISETA has adopted a comprehensive Aquaculture Sub – Sector Skills Plan for 2018 – 2019.
Given that aquaculture has been identified as a priority sector in the development of the country’s ocean economy, it is incumbent on us to identify the type and level of skills needed to meet the demand in this sector. Using Aquaculture to diversify fish production in the country is going to require an accelerated program of developing skills in veterinary science, marine research science, specialized state extension officers etc.)
The worrying factor is the current trend in aquaculture which according to the AGRISETA skills plan, is that the levels of education for both freshwater and marine aquaculture workers hovers around grade 12 and slightly higher. Quite clearly, we cannot achieve our development goals or service delivery imperatives with this level of skills profile.
The Department of Forestry and Fisheries has identified a skills deficit in the Fish Vetenerian profession, South Africa only has one qualified Fish Vet in the whole country. This skills deficit poses a serious challenge to the realization of the goal of Operation Phakisa to increase fish production in fish farms from the current levels of 5 000 tons per annum to 50 000 tons per annum in the next 4 years.
This planned increase in production would need the requisite skills to make it a reality. The Department of Forestry and Fisheries has intervened by introducing a range of skills development initiatives that include the identification of 6 South Africans who have been sent to Scotland to be trained as Fish Vets and upon their return their skills will be spread thorough out the country.
The department has also resolved that Fish Farming should not be a high tech industry only reserved for the most developed parts of our economy, hence they have also started a partnership with all the agricultural colleges in the country to introduce short courses in Fish Health, with the view of rolling out the short course programs to every TVET College in the country, so that even in the rural areas of our country, people can be able to have small scale fish farming.
The department is arming ordinary people with the requisite skills to be able to look after the health of their fish, this is the grassroots level skills revolution we wish to see in our country. We want more young people to get into fish farming and make it a fashionable career of choice.
Agriculture is but one example, the skills issues cut across all employment sectors including health, education, Information Technology among others. Today we are talking development in an era of the fourth industrial revolution which requires ICT skills such as digital innovation skills, data processing and analysis, digital design and app development, new media literacy for the youth and many more.
The privacy and agility of government processes is one of the biggest concerns of the Digital Revolution. Unfortunately the public service lacks skills in the areas of enterprise architecture, information systems specialists, App Developers, Data Scientists and Business Analysts amongst other ICT skills.
We must therefore, through this graduate recruitment scheme, ensure that we are attracting graduate skills that will make the public service that skilled and properly capacitated for the pending digital revolution.
I am quite certain that many of you are aware of theme adopted by the 10th BRICS Summit which is in session not far away from here. It reads: “BRICS in Africa: Collaboration for Inclusive Growth and Shared Prosperity in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”. The critical question we have to confront as Africa is what will be our contribution towards the achievement of this thematic objective especially in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution which requires high level skills in ICT.
A program such as the one we are launching today should lay a solid foundation in this regard to ready us for the prospects of the envisaged Fourth Industrial Revolution. We are therefore encouraged and excited that a program such as this unfolds at this critical time which challenges us to engage our young minds with the demands of innovative development initiatives.
For its part, the PSETA sector skills plan has identified the following skills gaps for the public service in particular:
Policy development
Leadership, and Ethics/Ethical Leadership
Strategic Management
Change Management
Monitoring and Evaluation
Operations Management
Contract Management
Project Management
Financial Management
People and Performance Management
Business Writing
Records Management
Service Delivery / Customer Orientation
Through its suite of programmes and course offerings, the National School of Government addresses these skills gaps. Consistent with the developmental agenda, the NSG shifted its curriculum philosophy and approach that is designed to address matters related to social justice and transformation. Through a combination of interventions, services and processes, the NSG is giving deeper attention to the pre-service, induction and in-service professional development needs of public servants.
For example, the Breaking Barriers to Entry programme targets unemployed youth graduates and public service interns seeking employment opportunities in the public service. Beyond this, the School is cognizant of the importance of unlocking youth economic potential, through unlocking funding opportunities, unlocking partnership opportunities and unlocking economic opportunities.
In this regard, I am pleased to note that the School will be convening a thought leadership on entrepreneurial development, engaging with the relevant experts and institutions.
The School has also been tasked with the implementation of the pre-entry certificate to the senior management echelon of the public service, which prepares participants to be ready to work in the senior management echelons in the public service. The role of senior management is to lead effective and efficient teams to achieve the Constitutional mandate and the goals of the NDP and to ensure effective delivery of basic services to all. Senior managers need to be equipped to play a management and leadership role in government in realization of these goals.
It is therefore the purpose of this programme to: develop awareness of the public service as a specialized career, and create readiness to respond to the public service leadership calling; prepare potential and aspirant senior managers to make a conscious decision whether they want to join the SMS and champion the realization of government and public service priorities as articulated by the Constitution; and enable participants to gain a realistic preview of the context and work of senior managers.
This programme is one element of a multi-pronged drive by government to strengthen recruitment and selection strategies to ensure that persons who enter senior management possess the requisite knowledge, skills and values to lead and manage themselves and teams effectively.
People-centered development and active citizenry within our developmental state cannot be over-emphasized. The National School of Government is also keen to explore private-public and public-public partnerships in order to pilot opportunities for the establishment of learning labs in communities. This, we believe, not only further empowers our citizenry but, with the right partnership opportunities can create entrepreneurial opportunities especially for the youth.
One solution to widening access to flexible and cost effective learning and development would be to enable participation in eLearning at Thusong Service Centers, which aim to bring government information and services closer to the people to promote access to opportunities as a basis for improved livelihoods; promote cost-effective, integrated, efficient and sustainable service provision to better serve the needs of citizens; build sustainable partnerships with government, business and civil society; and create a platform for greater dialogue between citizens and government.
Regarding this Graduate Scheme in particular, we will ensure that information to access these opportunities is made available through various platforms including the media, our local information and service centres and departments in both national and provincial level across the length and breadth of the country. We encourage graduates to approach departments of their choice to enquire about available opportunities in terms of this Graduate Schemes
In conclusion, I would like to thank everyone who is part of this great initiative and invite all those who are committed to the development of our youth and country to join us and make this country great.
Thank you.
