Championing skills drive for all sectors
“Youth development must not be accidental, it must be streamlined effectively in each of the departments because it’s a cross-cutting matter. It cannot be just confined to one area.”
These are the words of Eastern Cape premier Phumulo Masualle while speaking at the youth development breakfast dialogue with the Daily Dispatch editor-in-chief Sibusiso Ngalwa in East London recently. He had been asked about his administration’s youth development strategy which he has been championing.
He pointed out to some programmes that the Office of the Premier had embarked on, saying equipping the youth with the necessary skills was crucial for the provincial government.
“We have sectors that we have targeted like youth in agriculture precisely because we have a potential to grow this province given its endowments, so the youth in agriculture programme is over and above what the department of rural development and agrarian reform is doing.
“We are adding on top of it to elevate particularly young people playing into that space,” he said. And some of the young farmers that have received funding and training from Bhisho attended the dialogue and spoke about how their lives had changed.
The youth office in the OTP pumped millions into several cooperatives, donated tractors, implements, disc harrows, R30,000 vouchers for seedlings and took beneficiaries to the Tsolo Agricultural and Rural Development Institute (Tardi), where they were taught vegetable plantation skills. The first resident also spoke of the youth tapping into the maritime sector.
He said hundreds of youths have been trained in maritime – something that was previously not there.
This was because Bhisho has partnered with the South African Marine Safety Authority (Samsa) for the youth development programme – seafarers project. After completing the programme, they are awarded certificates and placed in MSC cruise ships.
“As we have seen here in the maritime sector, again you know that the province is endowed with a coastline as big as it is that remains . . . we largely remain foreign on it.
“So, as part of trying to prepare for the future, we started investing in young people, orientated, trained and engaged in the maritime sector – in the different areas that the maritime sector provides,” he said.
“We have also targeted other sectors like youth in aviation, critical because, again, in a large measure these are areas that were preserved in the past for only a few. It’s only post-1994 that we see the emergence of black pilots, women pilots and etcetera, so we are looking to support them in that area as well.”