The National School of Government on Monday began rolling out an accredited five-day Basic Project Management course for employees with disabilities in the public sector, which is being run as part of Disability Rights Month (DRAM).
The purpose of the course is to enable participants to align project planning components and to integrate these into a single, overall project management plan for a simple to moderately complex project.
The course will be delivered online through the NSG eLearning portal. This delivery mode is particularly important now as the country is still grappling with the effects of the COVID-19 disease.
The course will run from 23 - 27 November 2020. The period 3 November to 3 December annually marks Disability Rights Awareness Month in the country.
During this month, the public is reminded that people with disabilities continue to experience unacceptable levels of exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination, and are in the main unable to take up or access affirmative action opportunities or access public services provided for the general population.
The Policy on Reasonable Accommodation and Assistive Devices for Employees with Disabilities in the public service makes provision for employers to ensure that employees with disability fully participate in the activities of the department.
“Through this year’s theme, 'Together Building Communities Inclusive of Disability Rights', we are all called to play our part in ensuring that people with disabilities are able to access the same opportunities as all citizens of the country.
“The public service, in addition to ensuring that people with disabilities have access to services, is also responsible for the empowerment of public service employees to ensure they progress in their professional and personal lives,” said Prof Busani Ngcaweni, Principal of the National School of Government.
In addition to the call to action through the main theme, there are weekly sub-themes that call on specific sectors to respond in creating a disability-inclusive environment.
In response to this call, the National School of Government aligns itself with the sub-theme, 'Accelerating inclusive learning environments for persons with disabilities at all levels'.
The NSG identifies with this theme, as its mandate is the provision of education and training interventions for all public service employees.
The NSG’s eLearning platform aims to be fully accessible and usable for the widest range of users.
The platform complies with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines, which cover a wide range of recommendations for making web content more accessible to people with disabilities, including blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss and photosensitivity.
The platform is compatible with assistive technologies for the visually impaired, such as screen-readers and screen-magnifiers.
Hearing impaired participants are accommodated by providing transcripts for all materials and activities that depend on audio as a feature.
This important initiative is the beginning of a number of training interventions that will be earmarked for all learners in the public service, inclusive of learners with disabilities.
Enquiries for the 5-day Basic Project Management course may be directed to: Ms Angela Montana on 012 441 6802/ angela.montana@thensg.gov.za. – SAnews.gov.za
