08 Feb 2015

Member of Parliament for Francistown West, Mr Ignatius Moswaane has tabled before parliament a motion calling for the Old Tati Town Primary School to be turned into a Vocational and Training Centre which he said will equip the youth with necessary skills needed for survival.

Mr Moswaane said the school has been lying idle for over 15 years and therefore it was necessary that legislators support his motion and consider using the premises meaningfully.

Debating the motion in support of the motion, MP Ngaka Ngaka of Takatokwane said there was need to address the current challenge of skills mismatch in the job market.

He advised that Vocational education should be revised constantly to offer courses that are in line with projects that are underway citing big projects such as the Trans Kalahari Highway.

He said local human capital must be beefed up with relevant, practical Vocational training in order to avoid situations where foreigners come equipped with every skill and Batswana do not benefit since they have no skills, “We want our people to occupy high ranking management posts and drive these projects rather than become janitors,” he said.

He called for government to broaden vocational education course scopes in order to have a competitive workforce capable of confidently performing any task rather than import skills from outside.

Ghanzi North MP Mr Noah Salakae supported the motion as well but wanted a Vocational Training Centre to be opened in Ghanzi instead of Francistown, “I am not in agreement with congesting everything up north, I want us to take it to Ghanzi, we must distribute resources evenly.” He said.

Supporting his argument he said already Ghanzi has a facility as big as Gaborone Technical College which was not used which will make it less costly for government to bring the training center to his constituency rather than Francistown which he said already has something in place. 

“If we take it to Francistown it is going to take long to operationalize because it will require more funding,” he said. 

Leader of the house and Vice President Mr Mokgweetsi Masisi was in consonance with MP Ngaka saying there was need to deal with vocational training in a transformative manner and institute radical changes, “We need to equip young people with appropriate relevant skills to the market, we want to be more responsive to what the economy demands,” he said.

Rebutting MP Salakae’s argument, Mr Masisi said national resources are distributed based on empirical evidence and are not distributed along ethnic lines, “It is not our intention to distribute resources along the eastern railway line only, we are driven by such things as empirical evidence, environmental reasons, availability of water and so forth, we should not separate people along ethnic divide,” he said. 

Minister of Health, Ms Docus Makgato was in support of a Vocational Training Center given the large numbers of uncertified, unskilled young people. 

She however pointed out that the current low capacity of the existing brigade in Francistown must be taken into consideration. 

“Capacity of a brigade in Francistown is operating at 28 per cent. 

This shows that we are already under capacitated. 

We must be prudent in our utilisation of resources and therefore training and technical capacity should augment what is already in existence,” she said. ENDS