Mr Leon Roman, West Coast College Council Chairperson and other Council Members
Mrs Osma Jooste-Mokgethi, Chief Executive Officer and other senior members of management
Mr Andy Swartbooi, Atlantis Campus Head
Mrs Neo Sowazi, IDC Executive Vice-President, Marketing and Corporate Affairs, and other members of the IDC Regional Office
Councillor Miley Desai
Lecturers and Campus Staff
High Schools Principals
and Representatives of Industry

It gives me great pleasure to share this moment with you.

The process of the recapitalization of the myriad of colleges was a difficult one. Geographically the West Coast College covers the area from Atlantis in the south to Bitterfontein in the north; with having to serve a total population of 246,000 people.

I know that, with your other four campuses in Malmesbury, Vredenburg, Citrusdal and Vredendal, this is probably the most wide-spread college, but although also the smallest in terms of numbers and youngest public FET institution in the country.

I want to quote from Minister Naledi Pandor's Budget Speech earlier this year, when she said: "Further education students fall through a trapdoor into a shaft of limited skills and training opportunity. We need to have a door that opens into many rooms, many more skills development opportunities, and greater responsiveness to the economic trajectory of a modern developmental South Africa."

Our FET colleges are a significant part of our national human resource development strategy. Therefor the significant commitment to FET colleges is recognition that it has a vital role to play in the economic growth and development of our country.

Finance Minister Trevor Manual has earlier tabled a budget allocation of R1 billion to be used in the financial period 2006/7 to 2007/8, for the re-capitalisation of FET colleges to develop quality modern vocational programmes and increase the number of enrolments in FET colleges.

We have increased the total loan amounts to R20m for learners who wish to enrol in FET colleges, which represents a 100% increase over the previous year. But I know that there is a view that Government needs to look at the option of bursaries, as is the case with Higher Education Institutions.

In April 2001, the Ministries of Education and of Labour jointly launched the Human Resource Development Strategy for South Africa, entitled A Nation at Work for a Better Life for All.

This strategy is underpinned by a set of institutional arrangements, including the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETA's), and the general reshaping of our education system to meet the human resource needs of our country.

The goals of the strategy include improving social infrastructure, reducing disparities in wealth and poverty, developing a more inclusive society, and improving South Africa's position on the International Competitiveness Table over the next ten years [SA Yearbook 2004/05].

Consequently, in the Strategic Plan 2005/06 of the National Department of Education, Minister Naledi Pandor in her foreword says our focus in the next decade of freedom must be to consolidate the gains we have made since 1994. And therefor skills development and especially access to science and technology will stand out as key focus areas.

Our Provincial Government has a simple yet profound vision for this province, and that is to build the Western Cape as a Home for All. We have adopted an economic development strategy, which we refer to as Ikapa Elihlumayo - to Grow and Share the Cape.

As one of the lead strategies to grow and share the Cape, Cabinet has adopted a Human Capital Development Strategy with a focus on youth, which the Western Cape Education Department is expected to lead.

In pursuit of our vision of a Learning Home for All, the mission of our Human Capital Development Strategy is to ensure that all our learners acquire the relevant skills, knowledge, values and behaviour they need to realise their full potential, lead fulfilling lives, contribute to building their communities, contribute to the growth of our economy, and be internationally competitive.

The growth of our economy is directly related to education and training -there cannot be one without the other. Various studies have confirmed that there is a direct link between skills levels and employment. In other words, the better qualified you are, the better your chances of being employed.

In the last ten years the Western Cape economy has grown and consistently outperformed the national economy. However, unemployment keeps rising and was at 20.6% in 2003.

A disproportionate 46% in the age group 16 - 25 years are unemployed. That means that, right now, nearly half of our recent graduates are sitting at home.

At the same time our provincial population is growing, and we are experiencing "in-migration" - an estimated 48,000 per annum, or 1% per annum, typically under 36 years of age.

South Africa currently has a projected growth rate of 4% in 2005, compared to around 2% and 3% in the preceding years. But our President is now pushing for a growth rate of 6%, in order to create work and fight poverty.

However, the lack of skills in our country poses a serious threat to our ability to sustain the expected economic development boom in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup in 2010.

In the last decade of freedom, more learners have been completing grade 12 and tertiary education. However, we are not producing sufficient learners for higher education and also not providing the knowledge and skills in sufficient numbers required by our economy.

Sasol this year had to recruit about 2,000 engineers from overseas, because we simply did not have enough. Economists estimate that our country will need at least 13,000 engineers per annum, of which we produce just above 3,000 at the moment.

Right now there is about half-a-million vacancies in the industries of communications and information technology, finance and accounting services, and other professional services. But it cannot be filled because we do not have enough students who study mathematics, science or accountancy, who opt for these career paths.

Another very serious problem for us is that too many of our learners drop out of school. About half of the 80,000 learners who enter grade 1, don't make it to matric. However, we suspect that some of them actually opt for FET colleges, in both the private and public sectors.

For this reason, I think our Learner Tracking System to follow the progress and movements of our learners will be a valuable tool, which will assist us greatly in planning better and more accurately.

If indeed we want to grow and share the Cape, addressing the skills shortage is crucial in raising the performance levels of our economy, and thereby creating more jobs.

I am therefor heartened to take note of your growth over the last years, starting with only technical courses for 25 students in 1983, to 144 students in 2003, with options in engineering, agriculture, fishing and various community development programmes.

I was also delighted on learning that your student intake increased drastically to a total of 479 students when Business Studies courses were introduced in 2004. This, to me, says that our young people want to be entrepreneurs, and rather be their own bosses, which is good, because we need that.

Currently, the Western Cape has six FET colleges with 40 sites all over the province. We rely on these colleges to contribute to our Human Capital Development Strategy; and therefore have to be in constant dialogue with a myriad of partners.

Given the socio-economic profile of communities, which the West Coast College serves, we see you as a critical partner in pursuit of our efforts of building a Learning Home for All. Our Human Capital Development Strategy seeks to increase participation and success rates of learners in our FET colleges from these communities.

Our colleges must be responsive to the needs of our communities and contribute to lifelong learning. I cannot enough stress the need for programmes and curricula of a high quality that are responsive to the skills and social development needs of our province, our country and indeed our African continent.

To this end, we are committed to facilitate and assist in bringing delivery through colleges closer to our people. Colleges are here to serve, and therefor we have introduced a wide range of new courses specifically designed to meeting the needs of the Western Cape economy.

Our colleges have also signed agreements with Sector Education Training Authorities to support Learnership Training Programmes, to ensure that the learners are "work-ready" when they graduate. As in schools, the learning fields and subject choices in colleges will be based largely on the Micro Economic Development Strategy.

Transformation in education is about striking a balance between such imperatives as social development and citizenship on the one hand; and economic and employment objectives on the other hand.

Two main forces are driving the need for curriculum change. The first is political and socio-economic transformation in a post-apartheid society, where the imbalances of the past need to be addressed, and equal educational opportunities must be provided for all.

The second force is the need to meet the challenges of the 21st Century, where technology has changed the face of knowledge and of the workplace so that learners need to become flexible, life-long learners, who have a desire to learn and have appropriate strategies for learning in place.

The challenge of providing access to quality education, though, requires huge investments on the part of government. But for education and training to be successful, it requires all partners and stakeholders in education to join hands and deliver on what our communities and country need.

With these few words, I want to congratulate you on the opening of this campus, and wish all our students well with their studies.

Thank you