Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
May 27 2012 11:49
The country's 200 000-odd Tupperware agents are angry about the counterfeit products being sold as the real McCoy.
Johannesburg - Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana on Wednesday emphasised that skills development is a key strategy in achieving the three national goals set by government for 2014, namely halving unemployment, halving poverty and boosting equity in employment and asset ownership.
The minister was speaking in Ouagadougou, shortly after arriving in Burkina Faso for the African Union's Extraordinary Summit on Employment and the Alleviation of Poverty.
Mdladlana said the skills development programme was well on track, with over 75 000 young, unemployed men and women having participated in learnerships by end-June 2004.
"Since the Skills Development Act was passed, literally millions of our people have been trained under its banner. Many of these people have been the workers who keep our economy running in all the mines, offices, shops, farms and factories of our nation," he noted.
He added, however that considerable challenges remained, particularly regarding the co-ordination and integration of learning.
"In order to adequately meet the skills challenge, all players - particularly those in the public sector - must be working together to ensure that learning programmes deliver to the needs of the individual, society and economy," the minister said.
"The President has been clear on this matter, government must ensure that our endeavours are co-ordinated and all synergies are fully exploited.
"It is an instruction and it does not matter that co-ordination across government can be difficult; it must happen," the minister added.
Mdladlana added that the government aim is to bring all learning under a single framework.
"We want to widen opportunities for learning and enable prior learning to be recognised so that workers and learners can advance either in education and training or in their career paths," he said.
According to Mdladlana part of this process is ensuring that the National Qualifications Framework is successfully reviewed.
"Recently, in a number of speeches I have made, I have emphasised the importance of this. It is unfortunate that certain journalists choose to view this as an attack on my colleague, the minister of education.
"To portray my impatience with the pace of implementation as some sort of vendetta, is neither helpful nor accurate," the Mdladlana said.