HRDC establishes five more sector committees
Innocent Selatlhwa | Thursday October 15, 2015 15:05
The newly established committees are Transport and Logistics; Research and Innovation; Science and Technology; Education and Training; Public Sector; and Manufacturing.
The HRDC acting chief executive officer, Patrick Molutsi told a media briefing yesterday that the committees will be tasked with defining the skills requirements for each sector and advise training institutions to respond accordingly.
“People have questioned if these committees will have any impact, but the impact we are expecting is not from the committee, but the work they do,” he said.
Molutsi said the existing committees have already started formulating draft internship programmes specific to the sectors of mining, minerals, energy, water, tourism, finance and business services, agriculture, creative industries, manufacturing and transport.
Molutsi added that HRDC believes that through a truly demand driven system of skills development, the problems of unemployment and the mismatch of skills and labour market demand will be addressed.
He said this would enable HRDC to develop sector plans, which will among others, align student funding with the required skills in demand and also address the problems of overproduction of skills and unemployed graduates in Botswana.
According to the manager of HRD planning, Nancy Diphupu, the sector committees are responsible for providing advice to the HRDC on emerging economic trends and relevant education and training and skills needed in each sector to enable it to thrive and succeed.
“They consist of businesses and employers, labour unions, civil society, advisory, steering, support and regulatory agencies, education and skills training, professional employer and employee associations,” she said.
Diphupu said the importance of the committees is to provide a link, which focuses on identifying the human resource development needs and designing a collaborative education and skills development response that will enable the sector to thrive and succeed.
The committees, which have between 12 and 15 members, will be inducted today in a workshop where they will be sensitised about the roles of the committees and functions as well as orientation on Human Resource Development (HRD) Planning and its functions. The workshop will be followed by an inauguration launch of the committees.