YOUTH, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment minister Francis Nhema has appealed to the corporate sector to offer its expertise to enhance skills training programmes offered by vocational training colleges in the country.
Business Reporter
Government plans to increase the enrolment of youths at vocational training centres from the current 7 300 to 50 000 by the end of this year as it drives towards its target of admitting up to 500 000 students by 2018.
Vocational training centres were mainly established on the premise that skills development programmes were an important factor in improving employment creation opportunities.
“Corporates must chip in at vocational training centres and donate time in terms of mentorship programmes. The country has 58 vocational training centres and they are populated by your relatives who dropped out of grade seven,” Nhema said. “You will not hire them, you now demand five Ordinary Levels just for someone to be a messenger.”
Addressing delegates at the Institute of Chartered Accountancy of Zimbabwe Institute (ICAAZ) chief finance officers’ forum in Harare recently, Nhema said the country had experienced brain drain in the past. He said it was now up to everyone employed in to take part in offering skills to vocational centres.
“With all the braindrain that the country has seen in the past decade, it is up to you as the active workers to donate your skills to these vocational institutions. If you as the corporates have been helping the unqualified and unskilled, we would not have had to enact the indigenisation law as everyone would have been empowered,” Nhema said.
ICAAZ chief executive officer Matts Kunaka said the accounting board would consider Nhema’s request.
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ICAZ is a professional accountancy body and is the sole organisation in Zimbabwe with the right to award the Chartered Accountant designation.
The institute is a member of the International Federation of Accountants and is a charter member of the Pan African Federation of Accountants, which was inaugurated on May 5 2011. It is also a full member of the Eastern, Central and Southern African Federation of Accountants.
The Institute is the longest established and the largest Zimbabwean professional accountancy organisation and was set up in January 1918 in terms of Ordinance 14 of 1917 with 14 founder members.
