KZN's Zikala revs up young people's engines with garage plan

If you are a young township and rural backyard auto mechanic in KwaZulu-Natal‚ chances are that you could hit the big time with the provincial government.

Sihle Zikalala‚ MEC for economic development‚ tourism and environmental affairs‚ made the announcement that auto mechanics could score with their garage services training and accreditation programme when he tabled his R2.784 billion budget at the KwaZulu-Natal legislature recently. Zikalala said this was aimed at fast-tracking a radically transformed‚ inclusive and sustainable growth for KwaZulu-Natal.

He said the government garage programme wanted to recruit and train "backyard mechanics and young people".

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“The government will then build auto-service parks where all government vehicles will be serviced and repaired. These government auto-service parks will be run by government and will be duly registered so that even insured private cars can utilise these services‚” he said.

Zikalala said his department would soon sign a memorandum of understanding with Department of Labour which will be providing funding for training and the Trasport Education Training Authority (TETA) that will be running training.

Upon further verification on the programmes plans and model of funding‚ Zikalala’s office said the programme would be phased in slowly.

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His spokesman Bongani Tembe said on Monday that the government garage forms part of their "interventions" aimed at ensuring the localisation of the economy.

“This project‚ besides upskilling local mechanics and creating jobs‚ will also ensure that government ploughs back directly to the communities instead of taking its fleet of cars to established companies that are not located within the communities‚" he said.

Zikalala himself had said that his budget policy speech was not merely about the allocation of resources to various programmes or heavy developmental philosophies.

“Our budget is about taking forward the struggle of those who laid the foundation for our democratic project‚” he said.

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He nonetheless revealed a three-year plan valued at R94 million towards training 3‚425 young people on various technical skills such as diesel mechanics‚ boiler making‚ fitter and turning‚ plumbing‚ steel works‚ brick-laying and concrete work.

He said the training programme is linked to placements so that the skills do not go to waste after training because of lack of practicality on the work experience.

“A total of 1‚050 young people were trained in 2015 and the following year 1‚125 received similar skills training. The target for 2017 is to train 1‚250 and also ensure that they get employment placement‚” he said.

- TMG Digital/The Times