Telkom invests R50 million in skills development

Telkom has committed R50 million for three years towards government’s Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) initiative, the company said in a statement released today.

The telecoms company said the investment was motivated by the skills shortage in the ICT sector.

Since the project started in August 2006, various programmes have been conducted and managed by Telkom’s Centre for Learning (CFL). The public-private-partnership funding arrangement contributes towards deepening the country’s ICT skills reservoir and allows Telkom to draw the best readily employable youth and females, making this investment more than philanthropic.

JIPSA was launched to support the objectives of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative of South Africa (AsgiSA) which, inter alia, seeks to reduce unemployment and poverty as well as increase the country’s annual GDP.

“JIPSA rightly perceives skills acquisition as an economic and labour issue as well as a matter for education and training. Therefore, Telkom has become partners with the Department of Communication (DoC), ISETT SETA and industry stakeholders for the greater good of the ICT sector and the country,” said Charlotte Mokoena, Telkom’s Chief of Human Resources.

Mokoena adds that, in addition to legacy issues such as the educational background of historically disadvantaged individuals, the digital divide and inadequate exposure to the ICT sector, another major impediment to ICT skills development is the “seeming lack of interest by today’s youth in the sector”.

In an attempt to mitigate this factor, the DoC, in conjunction with portfolio organisations, ICT service providers and other stakeholders, are hosting an ICT Careers Youth Summit at Telkom’s CFL at Olifantsfontein (Midrand) from 28 September until 1 October 2009.

“A key aim of the Summit is to expose youth from 24 Further Education and Training (FET) colleges who are at NCV Level 4 to different careers in the ICT sector. Ultimately, we are hopeful that the Telkom-hosted Youth Summit will assist the ICT sector organisations in their capacity building initiatives,” explained Mokoena.

She added: “This bodes well for our Talent Management strategy of attracting, training and absorbing readily employable youth and females into our organisation. This, in turn, contributes towards our competitive advantage by improving our diversity and the positive spin-off’s that are evident with diverse workplaces.”

The Telkom-hosted ICT Careers Youth Summit, which includes exhibitions, presentations, multimedia video conferences and industry tours, represents the latest of various Telkom interventions aimed at addressing the country’s scarce skills needs.

Other Telkom CFL-initiated categories of learning and development that support JIPSA initiatives include the Graduate Internship Programme (GIP); CISCO IP Development; Skills Pipes for building on basic sectoral ICT skills and FET Learnerships.

To date, 986 from a total of 1913 students have been employed by 157 different companies over the past three years. Over 95% of these students are black.
Telkom has employed over 75% of total industry appointments (744), of which 310 are female.