Following government’s pronouncement that it will increase the Constituency Development Funds ( CDF ) to K28.3 million from K25. 7 per constituency , the Technical Education, Vocational Training Authority ( TEVETA ) has called for calls for identification of two secondary schools that will offer skills development per constituency.
The Authority for this reason says doing so will propel a broader implementation of skills development under the bursary scheme of the CDF.
TEVETA corporate affairs manager, Clive Siachiyako says his Authority has observes that due to a limited number of training facilities, access to skills development training centers is still a challenge.
ZANIS reports that Mr. Siachiyako said in an interview stressed that with the increment of CDF from K25.7 million to K28.3 million in the 2023 budget, there is a need for constituencies to identify secondary schools to be running a two tier system.
“ Government should work on addressing the challenge where most youths are traveling to other towns and districts to acquire skills.
“ This is frustrating the decentralisation programme and making the cost of acquiring a skill expensive as most of the youths are made to look for extra money to meet accommodation costs, “ he said.
He disclosed that TEVETA is proposing that 10 percent of the K25.7 million allocated to constituencies to go towards acquiring equipment for identified secondary schools so that they could open up to youths that are not in secondary schools to acquire skills.
“We need to identify secondary schools that are implementing the two-style-system and bought the equipment so that they can now instead of focusing on pupils they can also accommodate youths that are not in school that can come and get skills, so we are going to address the challenge of not having enough training centers, ” he said.
Mr. Siachiyako said this could be one of the key ways to allow more youths to benefit from CDF.
He said if the two style system was implemented the issue of youths not knowing how to access CDF and register cooperatives will be a thing of the past because centers will become information facilities.
This is a misdirected call. TEVETA is already in schools and learners are being imparted with skills side by side academic education. We want skills training as early as grade 7. This is what I think Douglas Syakalima meant when he said we need to change the school curriculum. What TEVETA must look at is increasing its presence in all schools and to identify which skills will apply to special schools like those in rural areas and those for differently abled persons. Since the demise of the switchboard and the typewriter the blind don’t have any skills because nothing has been developed. Have we run out of ideas? I’d be happy to see a blind newscaster reading news using braille, and a blind lawyer. We have more work to do than just looking at how we’ll benefit from CDF