Pretoria - An educated and skilled human resource is a key lever for accelerating economic growth and human development, says Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe.
"By enhancing the skills, the knowledge and the abilities of individuals, Human Resource Development serves to improve the productivity of people in their areas of work, whether in formal or informal settings," Motlanthe said during the National Skills Summit in Pretoria.
He explained that the county's current Human Resource Development Strategy (HRDS) was designed to complement a range of purposeful development interventions.
"It is a coordination framework intended to combine the key levers of the constituent parts of the Human Resource Development system into a coherent strategy."
The strategy aims to bring about articulation between subsystems to allow for optimal achievement of systemic outcomes, facilitate holistic analyses of education and training and the functioning of the labour market and link both of these to the economic development strategy which among others includes diversifying and transforming the economy, attracting foreign investment and ensuring a better strategic fit with citizen involvement and empowerment.
It further aims to deal with shortcomings in labour market information, ensure economies of scale with regard to complex analytical work such as labour market supply and demand forecasting, and initiate activities that cannot be performed in any of the subsystems, but which are critical for the HRDS in the country.
Motlanthe also noted that the HRDS spans several domains including education, labour market, industry and society noting that the problems that are intrinsic to these domains cannot be reduced to one institution or policies of one government department or institution.
"They impact on the collective ensemble of institutions in the system and relate to a cross-sectoral mix of government policies, private sector initiatives, higher education and other academic institutions as well as the broader society," he said.
Government has established the Human Resource Development Council with a view to supporting the HRDS.
The council is a multi-sector, multi-stakeholder and expert-led advisory group which provides an environment promoting optimal participation of all stakeholders in the planning, stewardship, and monitoring and evaluation of human resource development activities in the country.
Motlanthe said that the council as well as the relationships that will be sustained beyond the summit will be important for government's efforts to improve its human resource systems.
