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ABB gives R1.5M for skills education

08 May, 2008

JOHANNESBURG. ABB South Africa, part of the global power and automation technologies group, today announced a R1.5 million corporate social investment project with the Swiss-South African Co-operation Initiative (SSACI) to support technical skills development at disadvantaged technical colleges.

The corporate social investment project will involve assisting learners enrolled in the new engineering curriculum at Further Education and Training (FET) colleges. ABB has committed to an investment of R500,000 a year over the next three years.

"South Africa faces huge challenges in the area of technical skills and ABB has identified, together with SSACI, the need to provide practical, quality workplace experience for the learners as well as for lecturers who need industry relevant training," says Carlos Pone, CEO and country manager of ABB South Africa.

Pone added that the FET sponsorship was in line with ABB South Africa's commitment to the goals of the government’s Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) as well as its associated Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) programme to fast-track engineering skills development.

Ken Duncan, CEO of SSACI, says the FET college project aims to align training in the Engineering and Related Design programme offered by FET colleges within the new National Certificate (Vocational) by providing workplace-based experiential learning for learners and in-service professional development for lecturers.

Duncan says the project will serve as a case study for the national Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA), feed into its objective of promoting college-industry partnerships and help develop participating colleges as centres of excellence.

“With South Africa experiencing a shortage of scarce skills, the idea of the project is to improve the quality of training at colleges and to make it more relevant to the needs of industry,” says Duncan.

A large number of learners enrolled for the new engineering curriculum at FET colleges are set to benefit from the project as SSACI involves other companies with Swiss links.

SSACI is running the project in collaboration with the National Department of Education, the provincial Departments of Education and an initial group of four FET colleges located in three provinces, including the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

The colleges are the South West Gauteng College in Johannesburg; Umfolozi College (Richtek Campus) in Richards Bay; Umgungundlovu College in Pietermaritzbug; the College of Cape Town.

ABB was one of the first companies to embrace the project. Other Swiss companies that have shown interest are Buhler, Schindler, Holcim and Nestlé. Local companies are also being canvassed to provide internships.