Construction and engineering firm Murray & Roberts (M&R) on Thursday said it had invested more than R300-million, which amounted to nearly 1% of the group’s turnover and almost a third of its profit after tax, in skills, enterprise and community development projects during the 2013 financial year.

Of the total, R160-million was directed at internal training and development, with R110.3-million of this amount spent in South Africa.

“The more than R100-million skills development investment in local operations spans the entire organisation from leadership development programmes to artisan skills training, as well as engineering bursary schemes and secondary and tertiary education bursaries for employees and their families,” M&R said.

Meanwhile, investment in enterprise development totalled R143.4-million, while R15-million was spent on community development projects.

“I don’t think there has ever been a more important time for the construction sector to demonstrate that it is committed to the growth and sustainability of the sector, especially when it comes to skills development and supporting smaller contractors,” M&R group CEO Henry Laas said.

He added that a successful, sustainable construction industry would allow companies to continue to invest in programmes that help to train and employ more people, while still lending the necessary support to emerging contractors.

“This has been a difficult year for the sector; we have paid dearly for mistakes made in the past. That said, we will continue to support government’s efforts to create jobs, stimulate small business and develop the kind of skills our country so desperately needs,” Laas said.

This was especially important given large-scale projects like the 18 strategic integrated projects envisaged for the country as part of the National Infrastructure Plan that would have a positive impact on skills development, economic growth and job creation, he added.

“We need to invest in the right kind of skills development. There are thousands of workers that are able to work on large-scale construction and engineering projects but we need to ensure that they are skilled in the right areas, to ensure that sustainable employment is created.”

Laas added that M&R believed that this required a show of commitment from public and private sector clients, through their roles as catalysts of growth.

“While we know that we are more able to deliver on our mandate to train and employ when we are a sustainable industry, we also understand that, right now, there is a need to invest in people and emerging contractors. This investment will ensure that when the growth comes, we are in a position, as a collective, to deliver greater employment opportunities for South African people,” he said.

“We also need the sector to commit to increasing its skills capacity so that the industry as a whole is able to compete throughout the rest of the continent and globally,” Laas said, adding that this was a process that demanded long-term commitment from industry players.

“We have seen the success of this at Medupi and Kusile power station projects, where Eskom initiated a training and community employment strategy as part of the project agreement with contractors. As a result, we invested in a training facility that allowed hundreds of workers to receive a six-month accelerated artisan training programme off-site, and then further on-the-job training. This has worked very well to create jobs at community level and we would certainly encourage more of the same,” Laas concluded.