Chairperson, Minister, hon members and our guests, I thank the Minister for his challenging speech just now.
Yes, South Africa has clearly entered the recession that we hoped to avoid. This will have a profound effect on employment, and if we look at the number of new jobs created in the past financial year through the efforts of the Department of Labour, then we are never going to achieve anything like the 500 000 jobs that the President is excited about, unless significant changes are made to our business plan and our budget.
What practical measures are being put into place in order to achieve these necessary jobs? With the Setas being moved to Higher Education, Nedlac also being moved out of the department and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund being incorporated into the National Youth Development Agency, there will be fewer resources in this department with which to carry out that presidential mandate.
The Setas have consistently underperformed when one looks at their performance in the reports that we got over the past few years - and I have read them. Many have qualified audits, with a few notable exceptions. They have failed the department's own scorecard evaluation - one does not even need to read about it in the media. Business Day reported in 2007, and again in 2008, that members of the ANC have acknowledged that Setas have failed. On 27 August 2007 and 20 April 2009, Mr Mathews Phosa was even quoted as saying that most of the Setas were a disaster. We must, therefore, ask: Why are we still sitting with these dysfunctional entities?
Some years ago, I was employed under the jurisdiction of one of the Setas to do some training. I was paid R500 per day to train deaf students. I then discovered that the person who employed me was actually supposed to do the training himself and was paid R1 200 per day to do the job. The company that employed him was paid even more to get him to do the job, and he ended up getting me to do the job, which I did not know at the time.
During that time it came to light that the two companies who were going to take the learners on to run a call centre cancelled the opportunity. Suddenly, a class full of deaf learners were being trained to run a call centre that didn't exist. How ridiculous! I am still not sure that a single one of the people I taught has received any actual paid employment or learned any skills that were appropriate to their disabled status.
Johan Rupert put the problem of skills acquisition best in his 2008 Anton Rupert Memorial Lecture at the University of Pretoria, and I quote:
Too often, however, empowerment has resulted in the enrichment of the few rather than the many, leaving behind a vast army of uneducated, unemployed people. This can only be addressed by a far more effective nationwide programme of skills training. There are no unemployed carpenters, stonemasons, electricians or plumbers in South Africa, or anywhere else for that matter.
The apprentice system needs to be reinstated and the basic educational system oriented towards economically useful skills. The Seta system is mismanaged and it simply does not work. Ask anybody who has ever asked for a grant and he can tell you.
I would appeal to the Minister and the new Cabinet today to reconsider this decision to simply move the Setas to the Department of Higher Education, and instead replace this inefficient system with a simple apprenticeship system to train artisans and others, who are so desperately needed by the corporate and industrial complex.
Mike Macrae, who manages artisan skills training at Sasol Synfuels, pointed out in 2007 that the training of artisans in South Africa has collapsed. The numbers are dramatic, and he points out that -
National statistics on artisan training show a dramatic decrease from about 33 000 apprentices in 1975, to 7 500 in 1990, and 3 000 in 2000; the 2005 intake dropped to 1 440 people.