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Cape Town - The South African government has acknowledged that there has been a sharp decline in apprenticeships for technical skills offered in South Africa - particularly by Stated Owned Enterprises.
Education Minister Naledi Pandor said she didn't entirely understand why the major parastatals had cut back on training opportunities, but she believed that Eskom in particular was now heading a turnaround in this area.
Noting that for every tooling engineer produced, 18 new jobs were created "which is particularly critical for the automotive and plastics sectors".
Pandor noted that South Africa had to produce about 2 500 toolmakers over the next five years to replace existing toolmakers who were aging.
She noted that the department of science and technology had successfully leveraged "human capital support through international science and technology agreements".
This had resulted in jointly funded training projects with 16 countries in areas such as agriculture, manufacturing and biotechnology.
Pandor reported that these interventions were expected to create about 45 000 jobs in machining, welding, fabrication and tool designing.
This would also reverse about three billion rand in tooling orders that were going abroad to foreign manufacturing bases.
Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana noted that although training was carried out by sectoral training authorities - Setas - this did not preclude the private sector or public sector enterprises from offering apprenticeships.