A Public Private Partnership Programme aimed at redressing critical skills gaps and requirements in the country.
A project wholly funded by the Government of Papua New Guinea (PNG).
Introduction
Recent investments and developments in mining and petroleum (especially in the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project), agribusiness and consequent opportunistic industries and development initiatives has placed huge demands on specialised trade skills. For instance the LNG project alone requires up to 7000 workers with trade skills qualifications.
Currently technical colleges do not have the capacity to meet the variety, quantity and quality of skilled graduates required, let alone meeting the quality of existing industry needs. There is an imminent treat of the PNG skilled labour market being flooded by skilled workers from neighbouring countries which ominously threatens an outflow of benefits PNG nationals by right should trap. To responsibly redress this and to equip young school leavers the basic skills to meet diverse industry needs, the National Executive Council (NEC) decided (NEC141/2010), as an interim measure, to install the Technical Vocational Education Training Skills Scholarship programme (TVETSSP). TVETSSP targets school leavers between the ages of 18 and 26, to apply for specialised trades’ skills courses offered in Australian TAFE colleges in the state of Queensland.
TVETSSP is an Enterprise-Based training programme being implemented by the state for industry in a ‘state trains, industry employs’ partnership. Here the state through the Office of Higher Education (OHE) has made available a scholarship fund to ensure pre-apprenticeship training programmes for young school leavers in various colleges within PNG and abroad.
In this public private partnership arrangement the state will provide the training and industry or private sector can hire the graduates and enlist them under their apprenticeship programmes.
Apprenticeship Programmes are training and employment programmes involving a contract between apprentices (in this case gradates of the TVETSSP) and employers on an approved apprentice-able occupation. Generally, it aims to provide a mechanism that will ensure availability of qualified skilled workers based on industry requirements. The period of apprenticeship covers a minimum of three and a maximum of four years. There are subsidy incentives available for small to medium size companies that fall below the 2% training levy tax threshold. Only companies with approved and registered apprenticeship programs under NATTB can hire apprentices.
The TVETSSP facility is established within the OHE. The first batch of 150 scholars have been selected to begin training in Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges in Townsville and Cairns, in far North Queensland, Australia in 2011. TVETSSP will continue from 2011 until 2015 when it will be reviewed. Between these years, it is anticipated that up to 2000 PNG nationals can be trained in highly specialised trade (including heavy and dirty trade) skills.
Goal /Aim/Objective
A skilled labour force is a basic requirement for driving the engine of industrial and economic growth and to support the industrialization drive and the eventual attainment of the country’s middle level income status by 2050. TVETSSP is key to building up this type and pool of technical and entrepreneurial workforce. PNG needs to create a skilled workforce that can generate and create wealth and move people out of poverty in all districts. A country with a skilled population is the key to achieving its development goals as mentioned in PNG DSP2030 and V2050.
Hence, the main objective of TVETSSP is to contribute to equitable economic growth and poverty contraction in PNG through the development of a highly skilled technical workforce (men and women) who will be able to apply their technical skills and expertise in the new work opportunities coming on stream and in existing workplaces and the society at large.
As the capacity to nurture and develop these skills are currently not available in-country, and as an immediate strategy to meet imminent skilled workforce demands, TVETSSP aims to pursue these through TAFE colleges in Australia.
Current skills gaps
The Labour Market Assessment (LMA) supply report (2008) highlights that the current Technical Colleges have the capacity to graduates less than 800 graduates each year. Of these graduates only 200 are in the trades’ skills currently demanded by the new projects and industry. The report also highlighted that the higher skills required by the LNG, infrastructure, and civil works in the 89 districts and manufacturing industries are limited or not being addressed. This creates a huge gap that immediately needs to be filled.
Recent newspaper reports have highlighted the need for specialised skilled Human Resources (HR) to work in the LNG project. Reports from the project indicate that in the construction phase of the LNG project up to 7000 skilled workers will be required with bulk of them being plumbers and wielders. This means two things:
- The project will create a black hole in skilled labour force in existing job market and industry as the current skilled HR will be sucked into the LNG project lured by higher wages and new opportunities that the project offers.
- More foreign skilled labour will be imported through major project contractors to fill in the voids as well in new job markets created by these investment projects.
Redressing current gaps
To meet the current skills gaps two things need to happen.
-
Immediately improve the Technical Colleges to produce the variety, quantity and quality of graduates that the industry demands. This will require huge capital investments to resurrect the current colleges, ensuring ample training staff are trained and recruited, and basic infrastructure is rehabilitated and/or built to handle the variety of courses and the number of graduates required immediately. This will take from five to ten years to resurrect the colleges to deliver to meet current and medium term demands and expectations.
-
The need for skilled trades’ people for even the basic skill jobs is now imminent and proximate. This situation calls for immediate contingency arrangements to be made. The obvious strategy available is to train people in colleges in Australia and elsewhere, where capacity currently exists. In the interim this is plausible while we build up capacity in our existing colleges over the next five to ten years.
It is anticipated that the graduates from TVETSSP will, upon return, be engaged directly with the new resource development projects or fill in the void in existing labour market and industries.
Meeting future needs
Under the PNG Vision 2050 and National Strategic Plan 2030 the government anticipates that by 2030 and beyond, PNG should emerge as a middle income economy. This can be achieved through skilled manpower training and development. TVETSSP is therefore a blue ribbon programme, designed and intended to produce the skilled HR to engage in economic development of this nation through industrialization and modernization. In middle income earning countries, it is the skilled workforce or trades people that literally build a nation and provides employment for the masses. It is the carpenter, bricklayer, plumber, boiler maker, electrician, motor mechanic, technician, chef and tailor among many other skilled individuals that will build PNG and provide employment for many others in the years ahead.
TVETSSP with TAFE Queensland
Under joint communiqué with the Queensland State and the Australian Federal Government, TVETSSP allows Papua New Guineans to attend trade skills courses at TAFE Colleges in Queensland-Australia ranging from six to twelve months. These programmes will be attended at post–secondary TAFE institutions and are in line with the fourteen key areas of government development as outlined in the PNG DSP2030 and V2050. The fourteen key areas of government development include; agriculture, fishery, forestry, extraction industries like mining, oil and gas, tourism and hospitality, transport infrastructure like roads, wharfs’, airports, airstrips, and communication.
The beneficiaries will be the selected school leavers and non school leavers’ aged 18 to 26 from each of the 22 provinces and 89 districts. The first cohort of 150 (out of a total of well over 2600 applicants) have left in January 2011 and up to 400 students are expected to study under this programme at TAFE Colleges, in Queensland every year over the next five years (2011-2015).
All students attending TAFE institutions in Queensland have been subjected to a rigorous screening and selection process meeting minimum college entry and overseas student visa requirements meeting all minimum requirements.
All PNG nationals can apply. Advertisements are placed in the print media for school and non school leavers to apply each March and April.
Apprentices Work Placements
OHE is also coordinating the engagement of the TVETSSP graduates into the workforce in conjunction with NATTB. TVETSSP produces apprentices with a certificate II level (PNG & Australian Qualifications Framework certified) skills based training qualification.
