The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) feels that bottlenecks, sleaze and deception will continue shattering the supply of urgently-needed artisan skills training.
Also of grave concern to the giant metalworkers’ union is the initiative by the Steel and Engineering Industry Federation of South Africa(Seifsa) to source additional funds from government and the National Skills Fund in order to get more of its member companies to train extra 6 000 artisans over and above the required numbers through Setas.
This “smacks of trickery and rip- off deceitful intentions in order to find flaws” in the process, Numsa national training coordinator Malebo Mogopodi has charged.
Seifsa has recently announced a commitment made by 12 of its member companies to train more artisans in its training centres and provide apprenticeship to trainees. It is expected that it would cost these companies between R60 000 and R100 000 a year to train one artisan and about 6 000 additional artisans could be trained in the next three years.
“Of much distress to us, is that Seifsa and the whites- only Solidarity union, more often both supported the training of extra artisans in their own exclusive training institutions when they both rejected equal employment and training opportunities for the majority black artisans,” Mogopodi said.
Numsa supports the inclusion of the previously disadvantaged majority blacks in the government- initiated drive by the joint initiative for priority skills acquisition (Jipsa) to facilitate the training of 50 000 artisans in the next three to five years.
All stakeholders must get involved in the training of artisans within the Sectoral Education and Training Authorities’ specific chamber. Numsa further commend Government and National Skills Fund (NSF) for refusing to consider the Seifsa’s proposals to fund their private training initiative.
For further information contact:
Mziwakhe Hlangani, Numsa national information officer
Cell phone: 082 9407116
E-mail:mziwakheh@numsa.org.za
Website:www.numsa.org.za