By Frederick Philander
WINDHOEK
Because education and training is the key to enhance productivity and in the provision of knowledge, it is imperative for public and private sector employees to continuously upgrade their skills.
This is the opinion of Minister of Education Nangolo Mbumba, who yesterday launched a capacity building system for his ministry. The system forms part of the ETSIP Programme.
“The performances of some staff members employed at the Ministry of Education are characterized by a lack of some required skills, knowledge and competencies, as well as positive attitudes towards their official duties. There is therefore a need to strengthen the existing skills and thereby inculcate a positive attitude towards official duties,” Mbumba said.
According to him, the Capacity Building System (CBS) will match an employee’s job requirements with his or her current qualifications and will automatically identify training needs and the most relevant courses that such employee requires.
“The CBS will maintain a record of all employees attending training, keep track of the utilization of the training budget, will automatically issue alerts when budgeted levels are exceeded and it will simplify the use of management reports on training statistics and other employee data,” he said.
The new system is aimed at transforming the existing manual management system in the ministry.
“The ministry shall strive to avail resources to implement the system in order to improve the capacity of our people.
This should result in improved performances and service deliveries in the ministry. I therefore urge all the ministry’s employees and stakeholders to work hard at making the implementation of the CBS a reality as well as a resounding success,” he said optimistically.
The Ministry of Education has approximately 4 000 workers on its payroll country-wide.
“The CBS is here to address capacity development needs and we should all make use of it in order to gain knowledge and information for better performance, improved service delivery and to achieve the required impact,” he said at the launch that was attended by a number of regional education directors and ministerial employees.