EDITORIAL SKILLS TRAINING
PPC launches skills training for bakkie builders
Under normal circumstances, Mikateko Ruth Matshebele and Mpho Thulare would never share a classroom. Matshebele is a 37-year-old civil engineering graduate who dreams of running her own company. Thulare is a 24-year-old unemployed construction graduate trying to gain vital experience.
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or two weeks, the two shared a makeshift classroom on South Africa’s first-ever course for bakkie builders, learning the art of bricklaying.
The short course is a venture launched by cement manufacturer PPC to upskill South Africa’s scores of informal builders. “PPC is a proudly South African company committed to helping to build the country. Unemployment, and especially youth unemployment, is a huge challenge and it is vital that companies like us do our bit to bridge the skills mismatch which is undermining South Africa’s development and help reduce unemployment levels,” says Njombo Lekula, PPC’s Managing Director.
Ensures skills transfer in the construction industry He says the initiative is also an attempt to ensure skills transfer in the construction industry. “South Africa is losing valuable skills to other countries, while young people are choosing not to study construction. It is therefore important that we ensure these skills are not lost, or a once highly sought-after construction country is not going to have skills and we will have to import the skills, at great cost, to build our own country.”
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