2 August 2007

By Thapelo Sakoana

THE Gauteng provincial government will train an additional 1600 artisans, in an effort to improve service delivery in municipalities across the province.

The trainees will be in the fields of electricity and plumbing and be trained over the next three to five years, said local government MEC Qedani Mahlangu at the provincial Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA) conference on Tuesday 31 July.

The main function of municipalities is to ensure they provide important basic services such as water and electricity, which necessitates the need for these skills.

At present, around 300 artisans are being trained at municipal training centres on an annual basis.

The extended intake in training, the MEC said would be important to expand the pool of the much-needed skills in municipalities and ensure the smooth roll-out of services.

Specific skills that are required in municipalities include heavy current electricians who would keep the distribution and transmission systems of electricity operational.

Water service technicians and plumbers are also needed to keep the water and sanitation networks working in order.

Mahlangu said they also sought the services of fitters and turners, millwrights, water care workers, process controllers, carpenters, brick layers and mechanics.

The main challenge is the existence of vacancies in municipalities which is reported to be in the region of 34 percent, with the highest vacancy categories being instrument mechanic, millwright and painters - all in the range of 60 percent.

"Due to budget constraints and the inability to attract artisans into local government, many posts have been frozen and have been removed from municipal organograms, implying that the skills are needed," she said.

Budget constraints as some factors that contributed to the high-vacancy rate.

"The limit of 32 percent of income is allowed to be spent on salaries in local government. This means that municipalities cannot afford to employ sufficient technical staff."

She said municipalities needed to understand that although they might be saving money on salaries, it was possible that they could be accumulating repair bills which far exceed the cost of training and hiring artisans.

"This is because infrastructure that is not maintained prematurely reaches the end of its function line."

The MEC said another challenge was that salary scales for most artisans were below the levels of their counterparts in the private sector, which makes it difficult to attract artisans with necessary skills to local government.

Source: BuaNews