Windhoek
Pupkewitz Motor Division (PMD), a subsidiary of the Pupkewitz Group of Companies, hosted a Career Open Day for selected members of various educational forums and recruitment agencies in Windhoek last Wednesday.
The reason for the gathering was to inform key stakeholders of the various career opportunities offered by PMD and discuss how best to narrow the youth unemployment gap. According to Ekkerd van Wyk, PMD’s managing director, the company is experiencing the complexity and growth of the industry and intense demands from the public on a daily basis.
“Very few people are aware of the exciting job opportunities within the motor industry, and other than the general expectation, PMD covers all eight disciplines of a business management environment, which are general management, human resource management, finance and administration, parts and value-chain, service management, technicians, marketing and sales, and trading and business acumen.”
The company’s training bill for the year already exceeds N$3 million, including those employees and interns who are attending the Commercial Advanced Training Scheme (CATS), Vocational Training Centres (VTC) and the Namibian Institute of Mining and Technology (NIMT). “The motor industry is one of the fastest growing industries in Namibia and has grown by 300 percent during the past 10 years, creating an immense shortage of skills. As we all know unemployment in Namibia is very high, but at the same time the motor industry experiences an acute skills shortage” added Junior Bruwer, chairperson of PMD. Guest Speaker, Director of Education, Arts and Culture Gerard Vries expressed his satisfaction with the initiative taken by PMD to get key players in the youth employment and job creation chain together as a first for Namibia. With the youth finding it difficult to find employment and the chronic shortage of the right skills needed in the labour market, the director assured those present that government is hard at work to ensure that strategic imperatives, such as the human resources development plan, the Medium Term Expenditure Framework and the proven commitment of government to finance education with the lion’s share of the national budget.
With its close to 600 employees. Pupkewitz Motor Division has been in the motor industry since 1954, selling passenger vehicles and light and heavy commercial vehicles though its eight franchises in eight towns across Namibia. Today the company’s expertise in the motor trade is shared with clients via a network of dealerships countrywide, representing a choice of quality brands, as well as the recently acquired Accessories Fitment Centre.