CITF tackles unemployment
Galebolae Ngakane | Friday July 31, 2015 15:06
While the lack of jobs is still ravaging the country, according to Moepi, a light is twinkling in the distance. Soon the country would be swarming with citizens ready to take up jobs in the construction industry.
BusinessWeek: Please give the staff complement of CITF, breaking it down into its various departments.
Busie Jackie Moepi (BJM): CITF has a main centre in Gaborone and one Mobile Training Unit (MTU) in Kazungula.
The Gaborone Main Centre and the MTU has a staff complement of 93 and 66 of these are from the training department, which is our core business. The remaining 27 are support staff from Finance, Marketing and Public Relations Office and Human Resources.
BusinessWeek: Of the courses offered by CITF, please give an expansive picture of the new programmes, namely coded welding, rigging/ropesmen and grass-thatching.
BJM: The introduction of new trades, especially coded welding, rigging/ropesmen, was motivated by the expansion of the Jwaneng Mine during the Cut 8 Project. The companies that were engaged in the project demanded to have skilled personnel in mining related fields.
No more would the country need to import people from other countries to work at lucrative projects like the Debswana Cut 8 or the construction of the Kazungula Bridge.
Since there is a lot of construction and mining going on throughout the country, a challenge of acute shortage of local skilled artisans in the mining sector is experienced by companies undertaking these projects, prompting them to get labour force from their own countries.
Through the Ministry of Labour and Home Affairs and CITF Board of Trustees, the Statutory Instrument No.139 of 1991 was amended to include not only the Building and Construction Industry, but also allied industries as well to train for the needs of the economy.
A partnership between CITF, Debswana and Fluor Training Centre was established and staff members from CITF and MTTC were identified to go for training at the Centre and the South African Institute of Welding (SAIW) in South Africa.
Debswana therefore partnered with CITF and the Madirelo Training and Testing Centre (MTTC) and Fluor to impart Batswana with these scarce skills.
The following mining related skills were identified as scarce in Botswana:
* Coded Welding
* Rigging/Ropesmen
* Steel Erecting
* Boilermaking
* Pipe Fitting
* Industrial Electrical
After a couple of benchmarking trips at Fluor SAIW, CITF was given the mandate to train in these scarce skills. Debswana agreed to sponsor CITF and MTTC trainers with the upkeep while in South Africa.
Fluor sponsored the training.