The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) has warned of a bloody fight as it pressed ahead with the launch of accelerated artisan training programme.
Numsa in conjunction with Manufacturing Engineering and Related Services Seta (Merseta) and several other metal and engineering companies have unveiled a massive artisan training programme to address the nationwide critical skills shortage in the steel engineering and motor industry.
More than 22 major companies, including Mittal Steel, Highveld Steel, Columbus, Dorbyl and Toyota Forklift have agreed to participate in the R70 million pilot project for accelerated artisan skills development. The battle against employers who consistently frustrate local artisan training programmes begin in earnest as the country need more than 60 000 artisans in preparation for the 2010 world soccer games.
In the face of scarce skills crisis gripping the country, especially artisans it is “inevitable” that major wars will be waged with the anger that engulf metalworkers in our sectors over unwillingness to assess and train artisan aids who have unrecognised wealth of experience in order to assume the positions of qualified artisans, Numsa national training co-ordinator Malebo Mogopodi said.
Of major concern is that most companies chose to support provision of inconsequential skills at the expense of urgently needed skills development while critical skills pool cannot meet the country’s industry growth needs. If to date Setas have been allocated so many millions of rands on training yet we are short of artisans, the question is what kind of training have they spent taxpayers’ money on.
Numsa together with Merseta has set a target to train about 650 artisan trainees in the metal sector and another 650 in the motor sector. This is done with a view of rolling the project out to other sectors.
With continued research on scarce and critical skills for the manufacturing industry, Numsa and Merseta are geared to prioritize those skills in the Sector Skills Plan in collaborations with joint initiative on priority skills acquisition (Jipsa) and industrial strategy.
Numsa is compiling a data of artisan assistants identified for further training, through plant training committees and monitor the training progress. Automobile, plastic sector and tyre industry are also facilitating training workshops to ensure potential artisan trainees were identified. These would also include non-technical skills.
Now that we have won the battle against employers vehemently opposed to recognition of prior learning, particularly in the metal sector, the focus will be on conducting a series of training and bargaining workshops to improve grading structures of metalworkers to align their grades to required National Qualification Framework (NQF) levels.
For further information contact:
Mziwakhe Hlangani, Numsa national spokesperson
Cell phone: 082 9407116
E-mail : mziwakheh@numsa.org.za