Capacity building in the transport sector, with special reference to work conducted by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport and their Technology Transfer (T2) Centre

Abstract

Paper presented at the 20th Annual South African Transport Conference 16 - 20 July 2001 "Meeting the transport challenges in Southern Africa", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa.

The Department has embarked on an aggressive Human Resource Development strategy in line with the current Legislation on Human Resource Development. This Department is serious about redressing the shortcomings of the past in terms of providing an appropriate Skills Development Work Plan, which will allow for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL). This will ensure that the necessary training providers and assessors are trained and available, when the staff are ready to be assessed against the appropriate Unit Standards, for the various NQF Levels, against which they wish to be assessed. The process had been started and is progressing well, but much still needs to be done to achieve the necessary training providers, assessors and accreditation before the RPL and staff assessments can be undertaken by Accredited training providers and training assessors, at accredited establishments. This Department has adopted an in house Human Resource Development structure, similar to that of the Legislation, especially since we are a multi disciplined technical and administrative organisation. This way we have ensured that a wide range of facilitators and Unit Standard writers with the necessary skills and experience have been trained and accredited to meet the challenges we expect the Department of Transport to face, in the next year or two, as we implement the Skills Development work plan, and train, assess, and accredit our staff members in accordance with the latest skills development legislation.