STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS 2006
Boost skills, boost growth: Mbeki
6 February 2006
President Thabo Mbeki has announced a number of measures to develop the skills of South Africans, particularly in maths and science, as part of the government's Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (Asgisa).
"[T]o meet our objectives, we will have to pay particular attention to the issue of scarce skills that will negatively affect the capacity of both the public and the private sectors," the President said in his State of the Nation address at the opening of Parliament in Cape Town on Friday.
The aim of Asgisa is to boost South Africa's economic growth to at least 6% by 2014.
One initiative is the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition, a working group made up of representatives from government, business, labour and civil society, which will be established in the next few weeks "to respond to the skills challenge in as practical a manner as possible", the President said.
"I would like to extend sincere
thanks … to the response of the Freedom Front + and other formations and individuals, who have responded to our appeal for South Africans with the necessary skills to make themselves available to provide the required expertise in project management and other areas," Mbeki said.
In 2005 Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka made a call for skilled South Africans in the country and abroad to offer their skills to improve service delivery, following an assessment of the capacity of the departments of Health, Housing, Education and Trade and Industry.
"Across all these [departments], issues of skills, vacancies, delegation of responsibilities to managers of delivery agencies and relationship between national and provincial departments have emerged as being among the most critical areas requiring attention," Mbeki said.
"The first group of the 90 already identified and assessed will be deployed in their new posts in May."
Maths, science and school
fees
The government also plans to boost the number of maths and science graduates to 50 000 by 2008.
"We are targeting 529 schools to double the maths and science graduate output," Mbeki said.
Last year the government increased the number of schools dedicated to maths and scinece from 102 to 529. Named Dinaledi, the first of these specialist schools were established in 2001. They aim to increase the country's skills base in technical professions such as engineering.
Mbeki said other skills initiatives include eliminating fees at the poorest schools in the country. In late January the President signed the new Education Amendment Bill, which allows the minister of education to exempt certain schools from charging fees according to poverty levels of the areas they serve.
"We will also re-equip and finance the Further Education and Training colleges," Mbeki said.
Jobs for graduates
The government has also
established a database to help link tertary education graduates with employers.
"Last year, we completed the task of registering unemployed graduates, with over 60 000 in the database," Mbeki said.
"We wish to express our appreciation to the many companies that last December pledged to employ some of these graduates. An intensive campaign to link up these graduates with these and other companies will be undertaken this year.
"During this year, when we celebrate the 90th anniversary of the establishment of the University of Fort Hare, we will continue to engage the leadership of our tertiary institutions focused on working with them to meet the nation’s expectations with regard to teaching and research.
"For its part, the government is determined to increase the resource allocation for Research and Development and Innovation, and increase the pool of young researchers," Mbeki said.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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