‘More companies are embracing skills development strategy’

SKILLS DEVELOPMENT must be embraced as a key issue in any company’s business strategy in order to grow the economy and make South Africa a winning nation. That’s the message from Dr Piet Bothma, chief executive officer of the Transport Education Training Authority (Teta), who believes that in the past the majority of companies have merely paid lip service to the concept of skills development for economic growth by handing in skills plans to the respective SETA in order to comply with legislation and to benefit financially from the grant system. “By taking into account political, economic, technological, legal, social and environmental issues a company can establish its growth strategy, and plan its staff training and development accordingly,” says Bothma, who is happy to report that the transport sector is beginning to adopt this philosophy. “In the beginning people were submitting documents to adhere to the criteria set by legislation in order to claim funds as a rebate towards grants for training. But I believe we are winning the war.” In terms of reaching its training goals, Bothma is confident that good progress has been made. “All strategic objectives set by Teta in the last two years have been met and even exceeded. For example last year our target was for at least 1000 people to achieve an NQF1 qualification. More than 3 900 people achieved this objective. “For the year ahead we are looking at disbursing more than 94% of stakeholders’ funds and plan to provide formal NQF aligned training for at least 35 000 people.”