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What is happening with skills training?

Errol Peace, MD of BTC Training and Chairman of SAIS, is concerned about the lack of progress in the promulgation of the skills programmes for the security industry.

Errol Peace

“The outdated Grades A to E need to be urgently replaced by the proposed Skills Levels 1 to 5, which are geared around increasing the industry-relevant skills of the learners. The old system merely provided training, without imparting any skills transfer,” said Peace.

Companies offering skills programme learnerships to their employees are currently entitled to a discretionary grant. “What is interesting is that the security industry currently pays the largest portion of SASSETA funds and yet, ironically, we receive the smallest return on discretionary grants. We have 400 000 registered security officers, but only 50 discretionary grants have been awarded for the year. This simply does not make sense,” Peace continued.

In recent media comment by Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, much emphasis is placed on the threats, risks and problems regarding the regulation of the private security industry. Minister Mthethwa said that: “…the ability of criminal networks to infiltrate the industry and the vulnerability of the industry to such infiltration poses a major threat to the government’s capacity to address crime.”

Minister Mthethwa further discussed the promulgation of the Private Security Industry Regulation Amendment Bill, which seeks to limit foreign ownership in private security companies to 49%.

“My contention is that no mention is made of the progress of acceptance and authorisation of the much-needed skills programmes. The previous reasons given for not rubber-stamping the programmes were the volume of content and the cost of learnerships. By reducing the content, we have also concurrently been able to reduce the cost of learnerships. Given this, there should be absolutely no reason for the programmes now not being promulgated,” Peace concluded.

For more information, contact Errol Peace at [email protected]

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