Huge interest in Learnerships
Scores of unemployed young people from Humansdorp streamed to the Kruisfontein Civic Centre last week to apply for one of the skills development programmes currently being facilitated through Kouga Municipality.
The programme, targeted mainly at young people between the ages of 18 and 35 years of age, offers a stipend of R1 500 for successful applicants.
The streams are Labour Relations, Hygiene and Venture Creations and they each take twelve months to complete.
The Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) enlisted the services of accredited training provider, Tirisano Ya Bakwena, to run the programme.
Tirisano Chief Executive Officer, Robert Ngwenya, says they were overwhelmed by the interest as they could only enrol 60 applicants into their programmes.
“It is wonderful to see the enthusiasm shown by the young people in this area and we were pleased to learn from the municipality that more opportunities of this nature will be coming to the region in the near future.
“Those who do not make it today still have an opportunity to form part of other programmes and I would like to encourage these young people to grab the opportunities they are given,” he says.
Ward 15 Councillor and Kouga Speaker, Horatio Hendricks, confirmed that more programmes will be rolled out.
“More training providers will be recruiting young people in the coming weeks”, he said.
“The turn-out today highlights the crisis of youth unemployment, and programmes of this nature seek to mitigate and hopefully eliminate the problem.
“As a municipality, we will support developmental programmes that are geared towards making a meaningful change in the lives of our young people,” says Hendricks.
For more information on available training opportunities led by Kouga Municipality, contact the municipality’s Training Officer Zukile Thube at 042 200 2200 or zthube@kouga.gov.za.