08 Sep 2013

The education ministry is working on a number of legislative instruments and some have been passed to Parliament such as the Human Resource Development Council (HRDC) and Botswana Qualifications Authority (BQA) bills. 

“The HRDC will facilitate the development of the required human resource skill sets whilst BQA will set the credit qualifications framework to promote the standards of the education system in Botswana,” said the education reforms secretary in the ministry, Ms Taboka Nkhwa at the Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) workshop in Maun.

Ms Nkhwa said it was important for the construction industry to be involved in all phases of the skills development, especially public private partnerships.

“There has been an outcry from the industry that our TVET system either supplies them with skills they do not need or do not supply them with what they need,” she said.

Ms Nkhwa said currently, the TVET system comprised of public technical colleges, brigades, specialist training centres, in-company training centres and private vocational institutes. She said it was upon them to come up with strategies and interventions to answer the industry’s outcry.

Ms Nkhwa said the original concept for brigades geared towards the needs and realities of rural communities whose infrastructure was less well developed and whose level of economic activity was less robust. 

“In fact technical colleges and brigades as training institutions have not kept pace sufficiently with the changing training and educational needs of young people of Botswana,” she said.

She said a call had been made to take qualifications of the skills development of these institutions on board. Over the years, Botswana had been demonstrating a strong interest in the informal economy as one of the routes towards building a sustainable livelihood, she added.

“The informal economy provides opportunities for the absorption of poor and less educated people who cannot find employment in the formal economy,” she said.

Ms Nkhwa indicated that the workshop should reflect on strategies that could address the competencies including indigenous skills for the informal sector.

“It is very gratifying that we have made some strides especially in the construction industry by introducing a rapid skills development training model, which is run by the Construction Industries Trust Fund (CITF),” she said.

She said CITF has contributed to the provision of skills training at short notice due to urgent industry needs and urged the participants to dialogue on how this model could be replicated to other trades. Ends