At least 114 young people in Tshwane have been roped into a three-year artisan programme to equip them with skills to be employable upon completion.
The programme will be run under the tutelage of Tshwane Leadership and Management Academy and it will impart learners with skills in plumbing, welding, electrical, mechanical, fitting and turning and boiler-making apprenticeships.
The hope to change the lives of these young people for the better through the programme was expressed by Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink during an event to welcome them hosted at Tshwane House on Thursday.
Brink said the artisan programme is the largest in the country and it will afford learners to gain theory and practicals in their respective courses at the academy.
Part of the training, he said, involved participating in the frontline service delivery such as repairing electrical faults and plumbing in the municipality.
Expressing gratitude about the programme, Brink said: “This could be a start for somebody to start their own business. Some people might want to work for the municipality. There are a lot of opportunities in vocational training for people who want to earn their own money.”
He said the important thing was to create a kind of people that can build the frontline service delivery for the City and also give young people opportunities to lift themselves up.
He said the municipality would be using a grant it received from the national government meant for the Expanded Public Works Programme to give participants monthly stipends.
“It is not a lot of money. but it is enough to support someone in a training programme for a period of time,” he said.
Utility Services MMC Themba Fosi said the City envisaged the programme to be a continuous exercise in terms of offering the same training to others in future.
“I was a beneficiary of such a programme and I ended up owning my business. It is very important not only for opportunities of being absorbed in the City, but they will be able to create a future for themselves,” he said.
The programme was also said to be a strategic investment by the City to expand the training capacity for plumbing- and water-related skills and to ensure that critical vacancies are filled to maintain proper internal capacity to address service delivery issues.
In March this year, the City said it was driving the same programme to provide 35 learners with disabilities with pathways to careers in technical and vocational careers at the Academy.
The idea behind the inclusion of learners with disabilities was to provide them with the same opportunities afforded to their peers.
Pretoria News