Girl-child is the future of country’s economy
It also meets the requirements of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s national call for the empowerment of women.
Girl students from various school around Gauteng spent last Friday (May 30), exploring the world of work at the energy-focused company, Norconsult Iyanda.
This contribution to the cellular telecommunications company’s “Take A Girl Child To Work Day” initiative fulfilled a part of Norconsult Iyanda’s philosophy of helping to promote and empower women.
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This year the company offered to host the initiative in a bid to expose them to a unique workplace that deals with oil and energy.
The company is majority owned by Women in Oil and Energy South Africa (WOESA), a black-owned and managed company in partnership with Norconsult Africa.
The company’s managing director Thilile Njapha said: “We find that this relationship with our major shareholder (WOESA) is an excellent fit with our principles and goals and business practices. The time spent with the 10 girls was rewarding. We wanted them to know that nothing is impossible.”
She added that her company wanted the girls to realise there are no “no-go areas” for them as far as the workplace is concerned. She said the theme this year was about achieving one’s dreams and goals, adding that the girls too, if they can imagine a career, then they can achieve whatever they dream of.
She added that it was particularly important to demonstrate to school girls that the previously male-dominated areas of work such as those in the energy sectors are now open to them too if they choose to enter them.
Since the early 1980s, the company has been instrumental in energy sector developments in Southern Africa. Norconsult was the main technical adviser to the energy secretariat of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Their work included, among others, the initiation of the Southern Africa Power Pool (SAPP).
From 2015, the company successfully executed key 765kV and 400kV power transmission projects, as site managers and supervisors, on behalf of Eskom. Over the years, the company has also completed various engineering design including plant integration and commissioning projects in the industrial and mining sector for clients such as ABB, Sasol and RBCT.
WOESA Group CEO Khumo Ntlha said: “Black women in South Africa have either been at the lowest end of any form of business opportunity or totally excluded.
“It is therefore imperative for women to focus cohesively on addressing their unique position in order to address these facts.”
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Nthla said that her organisation’s first priority is to facilitate women’s participation in business opportunities in the oil, gas and energy sectors in South Africa. She said that the company was thrilled to be part of the “Take A Girl Child To Work Day” initiative as “it fits with the directive to empower women from the very start of their career thinking”.
The girls were drawn from different schools around Gauteng.
