HRDC, MELSD join hands to ensure human development
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday December 14, 2018 13:10
Speaking at the signing of the memorandum recently, MELSD permanent secretary Pearl Ramokoka said a team comprising officers from the two entities was appointed to make recommendations on how they could collaborate on human development issues.
She said the findings of the team highlighted similarities and inter-linkages in mandates and operations of the two.
“The purpose of this MoU is to enable the two entities to manage areas of common interest relating to management of skills and labour-information. MELSD is responsible for registration of all employers and employees, placement of job seekers, and issuance of work permits for augmentation of skills where there is shortage of such in the market, including facilitating development and implementation of localisation policy,” she said.
She explained that cooperation between MELSD and HRDC will include sharing of labour data and indicators required by both parties; sharing of data collection and processing expertise, tools and information dissemination; sharing of resource, where substantive collaboration becomes necessary and cooperate in capacity building, hosting relevant conferences, seminars and workshops.
Ramokoka further explained that her ministry was also responsible for developing the vocational training curriculum and instruction on the same.
In undertaking the mandate, she said the curriculum was developed in close liaison with industry, to ensure that graduates were relevant in as far as the technical demands of the labour market.
She said the MoU would be beneficial in development of future skills driven by supply and demand. She added that pursuant to that evidence-based policy, decisions on human resource development would be made possible.
For his part, HRDC chief executive officer Raphael Dingalo said the government had entrusted HRDC with a mammoth task of transforming Botswana.
He explained that section four of the HRDC Act mandates his organisation to provide policy advice on all matters of the National Human Resource Development, co-ordinate and promote the implementation of the National Human Resource Development Plans; and plan and advise on tertiary education financing and workplace learning.
“The act further mandates HRDC to establish and manage a national labour market information system and national education and skills development database. When we were developing the National Human Resource Development Plan (NHRDP) this year, a number of pertinent issues arose during the consultative process.”
“Some of these were that our education and training system is to produce job seekers and not job creators that there is a general lack of quality data to be used for effective planning and policy advice and that there is uncoordinated access to labour market information to mention but a few,” he said.
“These indicate that both MELSD and HRDC have many areas of common interest that require multi-stakeholder multi-actor approach to deliver on them.”
He indicated that in light of the aforementioned, the signing of that MoU with MELSD marked the consolidation of a functional relationship between the two parties that could not have come at a better time.
He said for a long time the tools they had been using to inform policy had been based on a limited understanding and analysis of the character, structure and shifts in the education sector and the labour market.
He, however, noted that consequently, the ongoing development of the National Human Resource Development Plan, Institutional and Workplace Plans, Student Affairs Services Norms and Standards and Labour Market of Observatory, amongst other tools designed to by HRDC to facilitate policy advice and development of the right skills in the country.