Story by Tafara Chikumira
GOVERNMENT says the on-going national skills audit will result in the country coming up with a skills gap filling mechanism, while those employed in various sectors are set to get proper evaluation of their skills with the aim to improve efficiency in the country’s workforce.
It emerged during a week-long strategic workshop by the Ministry of Skills Audit and Development in Kwekwe that the newly formed government arm has made significant progress in assessing the quality of skills in the country with a view to come up with a rich human capital that addresses the nation’s needs.
The ministry is now crafting a cocktail of measures that will see most of the country’s scholarships being directed to areas that the nation is lacking as part of measures meant to address the skills gap.
“We have managed to reach out to every sector of the economy. As we were doing that, we were also bringing in their various stakeholders as part of the consultations. So far, we have done about 39 consultation meetings. The reports are now out there and they are indicative of where we lack, which also confirms what we found out in 2018.
“We have done an analysis of all scholarship arrangements in the country, we now have a report on that as well. We are now planning for the next phase of the audit that will take place starting next year,” said the Minister of Skills Audit and Development, Professor Paul Mavima.
The Ministry has however raised issues of adequate resources which are required if the exercise is to be completed in time.
The Second Republic duly established a strong basis for domestic skills development which is a key pillar under the human capital development cluster of the National Development Strategy 1.
