How do we help VETA answer the call?
First a little background:
Every year in
Tanzania 1 million young people enter the labour market and there aren’t enough
employment opportunities to go around. Youth unemployment is high and many
other young people have to rely on informal and insecure work which is poorly
paid and come with poor working conditions.
At the same time, there is large scale investment in Tanzania. Large
discoveries of off shore oil and gas have led to significant investment in the
Mtwara and Lindi regions of Tanzania. Companies in the oil and gas sector and
its supply chain will have large demands for labour, goods and services and at
the moment the available workforce in Tanzania does not have the right level
and quality of skills to meet that demand.
As mentioned in my last post, this week was a week of
meetings, and it turned out to be a step in the right direction. We felt we would get the best feedback by
starting with the current companies who are providing internships for trainees. First stop was a local builder/engineering
company which has both carpentry and masonry interns on site. We began discussing the project goals and I
asked about the mechanism by which he received the current trainees. He mentioned that he’d called VETA and that the
potentials initially just showed up on site and there was not a CV sent or any
structure to how he received them. He
was excited about the prospect of this being improved in the future! Then we discussed the trainees and it was
said the majority are very willing to learn and improve their skills, but that
it took a while to get them up to speed because in this industry practical
experience is very different from what can be taught in a controlled workshop. His hope is that we could extend the
internships from 2-3 months to possibly 6 months and mentioned that was
possible he would be very willing to hire them on full time once he had trained
them for that period. By the end of this
meeting, it was clear that carpenters are indeed a huge need and it will only
increase. This company alone plans to
build 94 more blocks of apartment buildings in Mtwara as well as 20 new houses
in Dar es Salaam in the next few years. Afterwards it was hard hat time and we had a
chance to visit with the interns. They
were so proud to walk us around and show us the columns they had constructed on
site and said they were very happy with the experience they were getting there,
and hoped to be able to secure employment there in the future.
Then it was time to visit the Port and we met with an oil
and gas company which has VETA trainees from plumbing, welding, motor vehicle mechanics, and electrical on
site. Through the meeting we found that to
find the trainees here, the company had to reach out to VETA through networking
of employees and VSO volunteers who were friends outside of work. They were also pleased by the potential for
job postings in the future and having a structure and relationship with someone
in VETA who can ensure follow up and constant communication. We
also learned that here too the trainees presented themselves very well and were
doing a great job, however there had been some lead time to get them up to
speed as most of the equipment they were seeing for the first time on arrival
at the port. We talked to the trainees
as well and they were enthusiastic and seemed to really enjoy their
internships, and when asked what VETA could have done to better prepare them
they seemed to understand that there are limitations in the controlled
workshops but mentioned that more field practice would be great because the field
work is very different than their training. For instance in motor vehicle mechanics, the
4-6 cylinder car engines for practice at VETA compared to a 12 cylinder engine
in the field. Overall we saw that there
are opportunities arising at the port for trainees, but VETA needs to improve
on the industry experience to better align the training with what is needed in
the field. If this can’t be done in the
workshops, then again potentially extending internships or even having teachers
visit the companies could be good ideas.
Walking around the site, these interns were also proud to show electrical
outlets that had been installed recently, and it’s a great thing to see pride
and big smiles on their faces. I managed
to remember to bring my camera with me on site here and have included a couple photos below of us in the meeting and then one of supervisor with the trainees.
Great news is that although we only went out to a couple
companies so far, the upper level management/supervisors all seem very eager to
assist in any way they can to help strengthen the relationship between VETA and
the local industries. We are working to
re-engage an Advisory committee that unfortunately was formed and then seemed
to be forgotten after a meeting in November.
The committee is made up of local companies by trade and VETA management
and I feel it is essential to keep up the industry links and provide
sustainability after VSO has finished assisting with the project.
So now as I have only about 3 weeks left out here- it’s time to
buckle down to write out this strategy….
