Employer companies should not expect government to exclusively shoulder the responsibility of job creation, but should rather enhance their investment in skills and training and assume a “forward-thinking employee ownership” mentality in the fight for jobs, Manufacturing, Engineering and Related Services Sector Education and Training Authority (Merseta) CEO Dr Raymond Patel asserts.

Speaking at the Metal and Engineering Industries Bargaining Council’s National Conference on Job Creation on Monday, he held that employers should take responsibility for and ownership of the skills development of their employee complement rather than rely solely on government initiatives.

“We can’t say that it is government’s responsibility to create jobs, as it is only through [ownership by the employer] that [wide-scale job creation] will be achieved. We need employers to be in the driving seat.

“Instead of sending [matriculants] to university, we should be clarifying what type of economy we are looking to create and elucidate how [employers] can train people for that economy,” Patel commented.

Central to this was collaboration across all training and education institutions, such as further education and training colleges and technical schools.

Concurring with Patel’s position, the Steel and Engineering Industries Federation of South Africa (Seifsa) CEO Kaizer Nyatsumba said at the Johannesburg conference that no government in the world directly created lasting jobs, apart from those created in the civil service and State-owned enterprises.

In addition, government was not an “employment bureau”, but rather its responsibility lay in instituting and enforcing “fair” rules which created an enabling commercial environment conducive to job creation.

“As government is the crucial foundation of the business/labour/government [trifecta], it is essential that a strong, neutral government is in place, which plays its role as an arbiter beholden to neither of the other two parties. Without this, a country cannot develop maximally to realise its full economic potential,” Nyatsumba maintained.