The City of Cape Town’s initiative to upskill unemployed residents and ensure that small business and corporates have the skilled employees they need to succeed is seeing the fruits of its labour. Nearly 11 000 people have received work readiness training, 3 204 people have received work opportunities and 406 have been placed in apprenticeships and learnerships. Read more below:

My job as the Mayoral Committee Member for Economic Opportunities is to find new ways to broaden the economic landscape of the city by growing its depth and diversity.

This involves advancing high-growth sectors by providing skills pipelines and business support to drive demand and attract investments, which leads to employment. When I speak to small businesses and corporates, they often state that access to talent is a key challenge to their success and expansion.

That is why the Department of Enterprise and Investment invests in upskilling and training for Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs) and high-growth sectors. We don’t train just for training sake but have created a better link between demand and supply for skilled people.

Lulaway Holdings was appointed as the service provider for this initiative in December 2017 and the contract concludes 30 November 2020.

I am immensely proud of the successes achieved by this project. This initiative aims to provide SMMEs and corporates with the skills they need to grow, while at the same time, improving the economic opportunities for unemployed residents.

This targeted intervention addresses the constraints experienced by corporates and SMMEs in sourcing talent, by giving them access to a database of work ready residents who we have already prepared for the workforce.

The programme has a specific focus on youth and those living in high-density and traditionally marginalised areas. It serves to bridge the gap between prospective employers and jobseekers, which increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the services provided.

At the core of the programme is the use of Lulaway’s E-recruitment portal that is linked to job centres where jobseekers will be able to access jobs within their communities where they live.

Employers are able to use the simple digital interface to screen and track applicants, schedule interviews and select the candidates best suited for the job.

Twenty-nine employers have participated in this project and these include Uber, Fidelity, Clicks, Adcorp Blu, Atlantis Seafood Products, Bidvest Protea Coin and Cashbuild.

Another example of how the City is working to provide the skills pipelines that companies need, is the Cape Skills and Employment Accelerator Project. This project is the first of its kind because the City of Cape Town will be the first municipality to receive funds from the national government entity, the National Skills Fund. We offer roughly 3 300 learners the opportunity for training and workplace experience in the Business Process Outsourcing and Clothing and Textile sectors.

The City is working hard to achieve inclusive socio-economic growth. Through projects like these, we make sure that small businesses and key sectors have the skills pipelines they need to succeed.

Source: City Of Cape Town