George Municipality To Address Skills Shortage

The George Municipality’s Electrotechnical Services Section launched a three year learnership programme that aims to address the shortage of skills in the electrical engineering field.

The first group of 13 students who have qualified to participate in this learnership completed level 2 of the national certificate in electrical engineering and received certificates at a special ceremony on Friday at Far Hills Hotel.
Also attending the occasion was the mayor, Flip de Swardt who praised Michael Rhode, former manager of Electrotechnical Services in his absence for having had the vision to institute the programme.

"The Council believe in the development and training of its employees because the whole community benefit eventually. With a skilled personnel corps, better service can be delivered and through improving the skills of the people in our organisation, we also create better career opportunities and improve their quality of life," he said.

The training is funded by SETA. According to Marlene Matthews, admin manager at Electrotechnical Services, a prerequisite for receiving SETA funds for the learnership programme was affording unemployed people from the community the opportunity to enrol for the course. Applicants for the course had to pass a qualifying test. Eleven of this group of students are in the employ of the Municipality and two are unemployed people from the community. Four female students were accepted for the course.

by ALIDA DE BEER

Previous page