AfricaPress-Tanzania: THE private sector stakeholders have called for the need to establish well-coordinated National Skills Development Council (NSDC) that develops and nurtures skills vital for sustainable development.
They also advised that the NSDC should have legal mandate and financial strength for it to be efficient in pushing development forward.
This was unveiled in Dar es Salaam over the weekend during the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF) stakeholders’ validation workshop.
The workshop, among others sought to come up with recommendations on mandating and funding options of the sector skills councils (SSC) established in 2019.
According to TPSF Director of Community Services and Capacity Building Department, Zachy Mbenna developing skills were lagging behind due to factors associated with lack of legal mandate and ways of channeling collected funds to serve the intended purposes.
“All private sector employers are charged skills development levy which is 4 per cent of their total gross monthly salary overhead to finance the national skills funds.
“However, there is no legal framework of ensuring the funds are channeled for the intended activity,” he pointed out.
The Director further noted the establishment of NSDC, setting legal framework and ensuring that the funds are directed on nurturing skills are vital, when efforts are being made on grabbing opportunities in the competing world.
He said that ways of running modern economy keeps changing at the highest speed; therefore, coordinating and funding skills among the population should be given importance so that the country is not left behind in using changing technologies.
“Tanzania is one of the countries with wide skills gap. For example in the ever growing construction sector the country has few numbers of technicians per an engineer assigned and this delays development projects and may end up seeing opportunities grabbed by foreigners,” he added.
However, Mr Mbenna suggested, therefore, that it was imperative for having defined legal system and channeling funds to the right action and ensuring rightful running of such projects.
According to him, TPSF was mandated by the government through the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to establish Sector Skills Councils (SSCs) in the year 2019.
The SSC were highlighted to be established in priority economic sectors like agriculture and agribusiness, tourism and hospitality, energy. Others sectors are construction, transport and logistics and ICT.
These SSCs were established and launched in June 2019 by the Minister for Education, Science and Technology Prof. Joyce Ndalichako, adding that the said Councils have been operational since then.
Mbenna highlighted that incorporating the government’s requirement, TPSF commissioned two studies one on the legal mandate of sector skills councils including SSCs funding options. The outputs of the two studies have been submitted to TPSF for further action
