Manufacturing Sector Education and Training Authority
The Manufacturing Sector Education and Training Authority (SETA) will be a completely new establishment or “authority” in terms of the Government’s new SETA landscape that is due to be implemented in March 2011.
The general intention is that it will amalgamate:
- the Clothing, Textiles, Footwear and Leather (CTFL) SETA,
- the Furniture and Timber Products sub-sector of Forest Industries Sector Education and Training Authority (FIETA), and
- the Printing, Packaging and Publishing sub-sector of the Media, Advertising, Publishing, Printing, Packaging (MAPPP)SETA.
Clothing, Textiles, Footwear and Leather
The Clothing, Textiles, Footwear and Leather (CTFL) SETA recognises that training and skills development is not only important to learners and young people launching their careers. As a SETA, the CTFL has identified the need to enhance the skills of those already working, whatever workplace experience they may have had. This could be initiated via a short course, a management course, any college courses and even several online courses.
Over the past decade, since it was created and made functional in 2000, the CTFL SETA has aimed to create a highly skilled workforce within the clothing, textiles, footwear and leather economic sector. Their mission has been to promote and implement effective learning programmes and to plan skills development that will increase productivity and make the sector more viable. They have also tried to grow employment opportunities within this sector.
These functions will continue within the new Manufacturing SETA.
Forest Industries Sector Education and Training Authority
The FIETA as it is currently operating, serves the forest industry in South Africa, aiming to maintain the country’s position as a world leader in plantation forests. To do this, FIETA has been committed to develop an industry that is able to produce workers with world class skills.
The challenge has been the need to ensure that forests remain renewable resources, providing raw materials for furniture, wood products, and pulp and paper, as well as the need to always have a constant supply of these materials.
A major problem in the forestry industry has been that as much as 78% of the workforce is either semi-skilled or completely unskilled. Currently there is a critical shortage of craft or skilled workers, as well as technicians and professional managers to keep the industry operating as it needs to.
Quality of skills is seen as the most vital element that needs to be addressed, particularly in terms of apprenticeships and a general workplace experience. While a management course would help educate those wanting to become professional managers, and relevant college courses would improve the status of technicians, more specific and targeted education and training is urgently needed.
Media, Advertising, Publishing, Printing, Packaging
The Media, Advertising, Publishing, Printing, Packaging (MAPPP)SETA has operated as the sector training authority since 2000. At this time it was tasked with supporting and facilitating specific education and training needs that related to media and advertising as well as the visual arts, film and electronic media, cultural heritage, and the manufacturing elements of this industry sector; namely publishing, printing and packaging.
This SETA’s goal has been to raise the level of skills in this industry sufficiently to make the sector more sustainable and more competitive within the realm of an increasingly sophisticated global market. They have succeeded by increasing and improving the level of training providers, assisting them and guiding them to be able to deliver quality, accredited education and training via college courses and other positive interventions.
Like all the SETAs, MAPPP was founded via the Skills Development Act and the Skills Development Levies Act, both promulgated in 1998, two years before the SETAs became active.
While publishing, printing and packaging is to be transferred to the Manufacturing SETA in March 2011, the advertising and media sub-sectors will be transferred to a special Services SETA.