Skills mismatch can be addressed

It was revealed at the meeting that whilst many graduates roam the streets, there are also many jobs that need skilled people. Some of the reasons raised were that the local employers were unable to pay market salaries for the few who may be available. Such jobs are in highly technical fields such as medicine, engineering and the ITC sector. These are jobs that were initially not included or recognised. The ‘traditional’ jobs of policing, nursing, teaching, military, and accounting are overfilled and saturated, hence graduates who desire to work in these fields struggle to enter the job market.

This is a mistake that we all hope HRDC will address. But it cannot achieve that without the input of other stakeholders, particularly government, which is responsible for formulating the curriculum for all institutions from pre-school to high school.