200 young people in the Northern Cape have been selected to take part in the first Electrical Engineering Renewable Energy Skills and Water Reticulation Training to take place in the province.
The initiative came after the Energy & Water Sector Education Training Authority (EWSETA) used the database of unemployed youth in different municipalities in the province.
The skills that the training will offer are scarce in the province.
Northern Cape is a hub of solar energy due to its hot weather. Even though this is the case, critical skills in this industry are very scarce here.
The learners, who have been selected for the training, include graduates, who studied in other fields and are unable to get employment. They say crucial internship programmes are also impossible to find.
Dipuo Mannye and Tefo Noge are some of the selected candidates for the training.
“You look for employment you cant find employment, you look for in-service training. Its many students that actually need in-service training. Even the graduates also who have degrees they looking for internships. It’s one of those things you have to wait, sit until an opportunity comes for in-service training.”
“I’m thinking of opening a small school that will teach the underprivileged the youth of Northern Cape because we have many problems like the sewerage problem and we have electricity problems like load shedding.”
The province has over 50 renewable energy projects. The aim of the training is to get these young people jobs in the green energy sector. Candice Moodley, a Corporate Services Executive at EWSETA, says they will also be speaking to the mining industry to give jobs to the learners.
“What we giving the learners now are critical skills that they need particularly in the Northern Cape. If you look at electrical engineering qualifications and you look at the fact that the Northern Cape has 59 renewable energy projects, the fact that they are going to have the skill makes them probably more employable at the end of it. We are going to be speaking to the IPPS in the area, we will be speaking to the renewable energy sector even in the mining sector it will be very relevant.”
The training will start immediately and will last for 12-months. The learners will get receive an R3 000 stipend a month.
