Ramaphosa visits EWC’s Germiston campus

Deputy President, Cyril Ramaphosa, visited Ekurhuleni West TVET College’s newly built state of the art campus, in Germiston.

November 14, 2015

Puleng Sekabate 3 minutes read

EWC’s Palesa Hlalele (left) and Donald Makalela answer Cyril Ramaphosa’s (right) questions about their future plans. Hlalele (20) and Makalela (24) are currently doing their level four engineering and related design automotive repair and maintenance at EWC, Germiston Campus.

Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa chaired the Human Resource Development Council of South Africa (HRDC) meeting, at Ekurhuleni West TVET College’s newly built state of the art campus, in Germiston, last Friday.

Minister of Higher Education and Training Blade Nzimande, Ramaphosa and the HRDC members undertook a tour of the college’s artisan training workshops before the meeting.

The tour was facilitated by the college’s automotive workshop lecturer, Robert Churcher, where council members were exposed to how practical skills are developed and transferred to students.

Demonstrations of the practical training in automotive repair and maintenance, as well as fitting and machinery, were given.

Certain points made by Ramaphosa during his opening remarks at the meeting were: “We meet in the wake of protests at universities across our country at proposed fee increases.

“Underlying these protests is a desire to access education and to do so in an environment conducive to learning and teaching.

“It arises from an expectation among the youth of this country that education should be made available to all.

“As the HRDC, we are uniquely placed to make a contribution to the call for an affordable and better resourced higher education sector.”

The deputy President also stated that council has to address and focus on other education development areas.

“As we consider measures to address the higher education sector, we should not lose sight of other critical areas,” he explained.

“We need to equally resource, strengthen and capacitate other areas, such as early childhood development, basic education, vocational education and training, adult basic education and worker education and training.

“In this, we are guided by the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa, which is intended to ensure a coordinated approach to meeting the country’s current and future skills needs.”

Ramaphosa also made reference to the economic growth and employment opportunities in his opening remarks.

“We know that quality education and increasing skills level are a key enabler of economic growth,” he explained.

“Highly skilled people create jobs and suitably skilled people can be absorbed into employment when jobs are created; entrepreneurs also create jobs.

“Skilled people can become self-employed and form income-generating entities that sustain livelihoods, and expand to provide employment opportunities.”

Council was reminded of the key points of discussion.

“Our main item for discussion today is the Revised Human Resource Development Strategy,” said Ramaphosa.

“Council is expected to discuss the revised draft strategy and approve the targets set for the period 2015 to 2020.

“We expect that this strategy will contribute to expanded access to quality education and training, delivered by effective teachers in functional institutions and produce more academics and entrepreneurs, and more publications and better research.

“A more effective education and training and skills development system, situated within the broader economic and industrial development policies and strategies, will contribute to improvements in our human development index and economic competitiveness ranking.

“This meeting is also expected to deal with the conceptualisation of the Adopt-a-TVET College initiative.

“This initiative aims to identify industry partners to work with TVET colleges to address challenges of administration, management, governance and infrastructure and to build colleges of excellence.

“By partnering colleges with companies on learning programmes, this initiative will ensure a supply of relevant high quality skills to respond to economic and social need of the country.

“We will be making a call to companies across the country to become part of the skills revolution by partnering with TVET colleges.

“By investing resources, skills, guidance and capabilities, these companies will be contributing to economic development while also establishing a pipeline of the skills they themselves need.”

In the sitting, the HRDC adopted a vision, mission, goals and programmes that reflect HRD needs of the economy, as outlined in the revised HRD Strategy towards 2030.

The vision is ”Partnering to innovatively develop human potential”.

“The aim of the Adopt-A-TVET initiative is to create working partnerships between TVET colleges and stakeholders, mainly commerce and industry; to build colleges of excellence and to enable the supply of relevant, high quality skills that are responsive to the social and economic needs of the country,” said Nzimande at the press briefing.

“The HRD Strategy has been accepted by the council and will be presented to the economic ministerial cluster and afterwards tabled before cabinet for approval.

“The HRDC accepted the Adopt-A-TVET College initiative; the model that was presented will be improved as it is implemented.”