Training Levy Underutilised
Pauline Dikuelo | Monday January 15, 2018 17:00
Since inception, the levy has funded initiatives amounting to P242 million, with P6 million spent on funding training at the Department of National Internship Programme, about P1 million at medical internship training, P15 million at Botswana Chamber of Mines and P218 million at the Department of Technical and Vocational Education and Training.
For the year under review, the net levy collection was P281 million compared to P282 million that was recorded last year.
According to Dr Raphael Dingalo, although the levy collection has been consistent, the utilisation of the fund continues to be low.
“Low uptake of the fund is still our concern. However, HRDC has continued its mandate of managing the fund, which was established to finance workplace learning,” he said.
He noted that they still face challenges where levy payers continue to submit claims without training needs analysis and approved training plans by the organisation.
In addition they have noticed exorbitant pricing of programmes by education and training providers while some are not complying with the Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) accreditation regulations as well as unscrupulous intents or activities by some claimants and training providers intended to defraud the fund.
However, he said that some notable strides were made to improve the utilisation of the levy for skills development, which included the review of procedures and processes with the view to simplify fund requirements. In addition, Dingalo said that HRDC has also established the contact centre to assist levy payers to meet requirements for claims submission and provide general fund information.
“Since the establishment of the contact centre, the quality of claims submitted have improved resulting in a significant improvement on the turnaround time,” he said.
As at the end of March 2017, the fund had achieved a turnaround time of payment processing conducted within eight weeks as compared to three to six months previously.
Of the 4,798 total claims processed, 4,031 were approved and paid amounting to P178 million, representing a payment rate of 84%. Of the 3,338 long outstanding claims that were processed during the year, 83% were paid. Out of the 1,460 current claims processed, 1,247 (76%) were paid within a period of eight weeks of receipt of the claim.
“The fund continued to support other initiatives that were found to be worthy of skills development in the country as HRDC aspires to make Botswana’s human resource globally competitive,” he said.