Botswana: TVET Ideal for Sustainable Human Resource

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Gaborone — Technical, Vocational and Training Education (TVET) is significant to production of sustainable human resources, Human Resource Development Council’s (HRDC) chief executive officer, Dr Raphael Dingalo, has said.

Officiating at a tertiary education statistics dissemination seminar, Dr Dingalo said vocational training courses were directly linked with the nation’s productivity and competitiveness.

The promotion of technical and vocational education, he said, was what the country needed in order to achieve sustainable development since vocational institutions produced hands on marketable graduates.

He said vocational training had, since its inception, struggled to gain the recognition it deserved. That led to a widening gap between the supply and demand for skilled manpower across various industries.

This shortage of skilled manpower, he said, translated directly into unemployment among an increasing number of graduates who were forced to be re-trained in order to become marketable.

Technical and vocational graduates were also on a high demand in the mining industry.

“The mining industry is currently short on qualified and skills artisans therefore government need to develop VTCs and make them more appealing for student enrollment and students also need to take advantage of that,” he said.

He said brigades should be acknowledged for the role they played in producing marketable graduates who not only sought to be employed, but were also keen on creating job opportunities for others as evidenced by the number of welding and auto mechanics entrepreneurs around the country.

Dr Dingalo noted that it was pleasing to note that the 2017/18 tertiary education enrollment statistics reflected that technical colleges recorded the highest certificate enrollment standing at 1 278 or 23.67 per cent with the second highest enrollment being diploma programmes at 1 200.

He said the enrollment in brigades was 5 793, which was constituted by students in Trade Test C, Trade Test B and Certificate programmes with the highest enrollment in trade test being 3 240.

Furthermore, Dr Dingalo appealed to government to consider its national budget allocation and proposed for more funds to be channeled towards the development of technical and vocational training.

Source : BOPA

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