Life at Work

This blog reflects on life at work at comments on the latest news that shapes my 9-5 working day in a Corporate Communications consultancy.

About Me

I am a born and bred South African who has always loved to read and write. As a child my mother used to read to me and my siblings, from classics like the “Lord of the Rings” but later also from her own stories. She would write children’s stories and then use us as her test audience, but I loved to hear what she had written long after my siblings had tired of it. So I grew up in an environment of reading and writing, which inspired my love of these things. I hope to write a great book some day, and have learnt first hand the determination and will that it takes. My love of English inspired me to continue my study of it at university. I majored in Law and English in a BA degree at UCT where I found that I took to English much more than law. I enjoyed learning about South Africa’s history and the development of our liberal Constitution, which increasingly made me committed to the hope this country has for the future. Ideally, I’d like to find myself in a job where I am able to write; that allows a good mix of time spent with people and being able to work on my own.

Thursday, 11 December 2008

Companies should offer internships

Something from today's Business Day on the importance of internships in equipping SA with the skills the country needs.

Companies ‘should offer internships’
Luphert Chilwane
11 Dec 08

SA NEEDED legislation that forced companies to give engineering students the internship-type work placements they needed to obtain their qualifications, said Vaal University of Technology faculty officer of co-operative education, Dutch Matlaletsa, yesterday. Matlaletsa’s comment came after Science and Technology Minister Mosibudi Mangena said that each year several thousand students could not graduate because they could not secure internship work placements . Speaking at the Technical Skills Africa conference in Johannesburg, Matlaletsa said that SA’s skills shortage continued to restrict the country’s growth and development. “Companies must refrain from using universities as ATM cash-cows because they are not investing much into students’ skills development,” he said .

For SA to survive, it had to produce at least 1000 engineering graduates annually until 2014. The science and technology department had adopted 18 (two from each province) of the government’s dedicated mathematics and sciences schools, giving them learning materials and support, Mangena said. This was part of the department’s plan to help increase the number of matriculants eligible for entry into science, engineering and technology studies at higher education institutions. The 2008 Scarce Skills Quota list showed that annually SA needed an injection of 1000 civil engineers, 500 aeronautical engineers, 500 electrical and electronic engineers, and 500 specialist pipe engineers, he said. SA’s higher education institutions were not producing the requisite number of engineers to match the growth rates in the South African economy, and students were affected because they could not secure the internship-type work they had to complete to obtain their qualifications, Mangena said.
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1 comment:

Ijeoma Uche-Okeke said...

Hi, I was just talking about internships and their usefulness in my blog today. I think companies need to really streamline what the purpose of the internship is and what the next level is after that. Some organisations have it right in terms of the purpose of internships and others are just groping around.

16 January 2009 at 13:29

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