[JOHANNESBURG]

The Artisan Training Institute (ATI) and the South African Capital Equipment Export Council (SACEEC) have secured a partnership that cements their mutual goal of fighting unemployment in South Africa.

This month, the two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that would see them working closely together on overlapping issues, of which the most pressing is equipping South Africa’s unemployed youth with job-ready skills.

ATI is one of the biggest private engineering training providers in South Africa, while SACEEC has established itself as a major export council in the SADC region, promoting the exports of South African capital equipment, machinery, general engineering and agriculture equipment. The Council has exported to 87 countries globally, from Patagonia to Mongolia and New Zealand to Alaska.

“The partnership with ATI is a strategic fit for SACEEC,” says Eric Bruggeman, its managing director. “The growth of South Africa’s export market is intrinsically linked with the availability of South African skills to grow local manufacturing.”

SACEEC has embarked on an aggressive localisation drive, partly through its collaboration with the Gauteng Growth & Development Agency. In this capacity, the Council visits South African municipalities, supports them to buy locally-produced engineering equipment, and finds South African alternatives to global brands.

“We believe that amongst the municipalities alone, there is approximately R3-billion per year in capital equipment that could be supplied from South Africa. If you translate this figure to job creation, it is significant,” says Hugh Saunders, chief financial officer of SACEEC.

“For every R1-million South Africa spends locally, we create up to 10 jobs. R3-billion therefore equates to roughly 30,000 jobs per year,” Saunders continues.

To enable local uptake in South African capital equipment and other products, municipalities require a surge in the availability of engineering skills.

This is where SACEEC’s partnership with ATI is critical. The Institute trains on average 1,200 artisans per year, aiming to grow its output of skilled artisans through on-going engagement with industry, donors and government.

Through the MoU between the two parties, SACEEC will address its member organisations’ skills needs by matching it with ATI’s service offering. SACEEC will be sending over 30 learner artisans to ATI’s Roodepoort campus over the next eight to twelve months.

SACEEC visited ATI’s campus on 5 November to explore the details of the partnership. During the visit, Bruggeman said he has been impressed with ATI’s training facilities and staffing. “I’ve been to all the training centres on the East Rand and none of them compare to what we saw today,” he said during the meeting.

As an export Council, capital equipment exhibitions form an integral part of SACEEC’s strategy to grow local manufacturers’ business footprints. Currently, it participates in over 30 tradeshows per year.

One of the newest in its arsenal of tradeshows is the inaugural Local Southern African Manufacturing Expo (LME), set to take place from 21-23 May 2019 at Nasrec in Johannesburg. The exhibition is endorsed by David Makhura, the Premier of Gauteng and organised by SACEEC in partnership with Specialised Exhibitions Montgomery.

“The expo will be the first exhibition to showcase locally-manufactured equipment only to the international and local community. We have already secured the participation of 35 countries,” says Bruggeman.

According to Sean Jones, managing director of ATI, the show presents an excellent opportunity to expose the market to the high standard of engineering equipment, services and skills Southern Africa has to offer.

ATI will be participating at LME, in partnership with SACEEC, by displaying its full technical skills offering in an interactive workshop setting. Skills such as fitting and turning, fabrication, welding, boilermaking, electrical & instrumentation skills, and pneumatics, hydraulics & electro-pneumatics will be exhibited.

A similar approach between the two organisations were followed at the Electra Mining Africa tradeshow that took place at Nasrec in September. For the first time in Electra’s 46-year history, the show dedicated the five-day event to specific themes, of which the first day focussed solely on skills development.

A section of the Nasrec centre was earmarked as a skills development centre, run by SACEEC in partnership with ATI. It comprised a fully functional workshop where learners demonstrated the technical skills they learnt at ATI.

According to Gerhardt van der Merwe, ATI’s marketing and sales manager, the intention of the exhibition was to demonstrate the different training options available to the mining and construction industry and encourage youngsters to consider artisan training as an exciting career development opportunity.

Future trade exhibitions in partnership with SACEEC and Specialised Exhibitions will include similar skills development areas and promotion strategies.

“ATI is excited to be associated with a trade council of SACEEC’s calibre,” says Jones. “A focus on local manufacturing, coupled with skills development, are key ingredients to reignite South Africa’s struggling economy and fight growing numbers of unemployment”.

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For interviews, please contact:

Sean Jones
MD, ATI
+27 83 777 2892

Eric Bruggeman
CEO, SACEEC
+27 83 459 3073

Charlene Hefer
Portfolio Director
Specialised Exhibitions
+27 84 401 2158

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The centralising of functions within the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) will help to address the challenges within the diluted entities. However, Sean Jones, managing director from the Artisan Training Institute (ATI), says the management and allocation of funds would be critical to guarantee the SETAs sustainability beyond 2020.

Reform of the SETAs has been on the cards since 2015 in a bid to implement the National Skills Development Strategy (NSDS). Former education minister Blade Nzimande has been a vocal critic of the management and administration of the SETAs, followed by many attempts by the Department of Higher Education and Training to restructure them.

In August, the Department again called for public comment on the long-proposed ‘new landscape’ of the SETAs. In the call Minister Naledi Pandor gave stakeholders 21 days to respond with comment.

In December 2016, the SETAs were re-established for two years from 2018 to 2020. Published in the Government Gazette, Pandor’s most recent proposal stipulates four guiding principles for the new life of the SETAs post 2020.

One, that skills development strategies should be aligned with national priorities and an industrial policy framework. Two, that the SETAs should comprehensively cover all economic sectors. Three, that the financial sustainability and operational viability of the SETAs are pivotal. And four, that specific SETA functions are grouped together (the proposal suggests that the current 21 SETAs would be clustered in 15 groups).

Various spheres of society have expressed concerns about the third principle, specifically where it relates to the effectiveness of the SETAs and its spending of the skills development levy.

According to Jones, merely reducing SETA numbers will not necessarily result in improved performance. Performance of these bodies should be linked to job creation in the sectors they serve. In addition, industry should measure SETA performance based on the levels of engagement and professionalism of these bodies.

“The sustainability of the SETAs relies heavily on funding allocations. Centralised funding will not redress youth unemployment, especially if industry isn’t benefitting from the efforts they put into training,” he says.

Earlier this year, former minister, Hlengiwe Buhle Mkhize’s proposed changes to the Skills Development Act referring to a new policy to restore the SETAs. Consulting with the National Skills Authority (NSA), the sector had time to respond to this proposal until 31 January 2018.

As part of the amendments, the Department highlighted the removal of the regional SETA offices to create one central office. This will translate into shared operational resources such as HR and information technology.

“A tighter, more streamlined alignment of the SETAs is a key step in strengthening them,” says Jones. “This proposal will be able to predict scare skills more easily, but only if industry is properly consulted; and that’s been a concern for private sector training providers in the past,” says Jones.

According to Jones, the Department must delve deep into the consultative process and engage training providers and employers across different industry bodies, including small and medium enterprises, as the needs are very different. “Consultation is critical. It drives straight into the creation of jobs. If you’re misaligning your focus on skills development, it affects the ability of youth to be absorbed into gainful employment,” he concludes.

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When the economy slows down, businesses have a tendenchy to cut spending on skills development.

According to Mr Ngqabutho Ncube, training manager at BME’s underground mining operations, the cutting of training budgets is counterintuitive to business sustainability. With the cyclic nature of economic activities, a slowdown in economic activities affords companies an opportunity to develop its skills capacity. 

The World Bank is of the view that South Africa needs skilled jobs for the poor to reduce inequality more than ever. An economic report released by the organisation earlier this year, states that poverty could be halved, dropping to 4.1million people by 2030 from 10.5million in 2017 if South Africa invests in skills development now.

Against this backdrop, BME has recently enrolled seven employees on an artisan learnership training programme at the Artisan Training Institute (ATI). This is in line with BME’s ethos of staying competitive as a specialised business in the mining sector and utilising the excess time available from an economic downturn.

The candidates will undergo a recognition of prior learning (RPL) process in September to benchmark their current competencies and level of on-the-job skills, then complete the programme later this year. “Our aim is to make sure that we train as many millwrights as we can, but this will be determined by the trainees’ ability to qualify during the pre-test selection criteria”.

Skills versatility is important, says Ncube. “BME is not following a one-dimensional approach to training and development”. The objective is to have a multiskilled artisan knowledgeable in electrical, mechanical and hydraulic skills.

According to Sean Jones from ATI, it is encouraging to see specialised organisations such as BME invest in skills development. “Naturally, we, as a training provider see the value, but we also note the trend of hesitating to spend on training in a downturn”. In South Africa, training and development is even more important, because of structural unemployment and present inequalities. “As the population ages, we are likely to see a situation where unemployment increases even further while the job market remains with an unskilled labour force. We have to prevent that at all costs,” Ncube concludes.

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