Namibian skills shortage a convenient crutch

Namibia’s chronic skills shortage in all industries is not getting the practical attention it deserves, says intern overseer.

Namibia’s shortage of skilled internal labour in the many disciplines identified by the country as essential to its growth prospects, is often emphasized.

From engineers required in the mining and budding oil exploration industries to artisans expected to bring about their own employment for self and others, the lack of skilled local workers has become a regular complaint from industry.

Although, according to the Director for the Polytechnic of Namibia’s Centre for Cooperative Education (CCE) Carva Pop, there still appears to be little resolve from those complaining to address this challenge.

The CCE earlier this year launched the “multi-disciplinary student research project”, an internship programme that currently links students from the tertiary institution to advertising agency adforceDDB, as well as to the Olthaver & List Group of companies.

“We basically serve as a coordination hub between the students and companies,” Pop says, adding that this approach is an improvement over the traditional scenario where students individually apply for placements.

He adds though that thus far local companies have been reluctant to get on board, something he attributes to the country’s established business culture.

“There is no real history of internship in Namibia, even legislatively there hasn’t been much of an appreciation for the role of internship until recently,” Pop says.

“There’s a large reliance on expatriates for skilled work in Namibia, which doesn’t maximize our developmental efforts,” he says.

Where local skills are seen valued, he adds, this often only happens in Windhoek with the rest of the country ignored.

“From the centre’s perspective, we have gone out and created partnerships in the regions, we have signed a number of Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) with town councils, but it remains a challenge getting them to see the benefit to their operations.  It takes some explaining” he says.

A Practical profit

Designed in conjunction with international academic partners, Pop says the CCE’s pilot project tries to avoid isolating different disciplines as can often become the case in traditional academics.

“In the industry one can’t say I’m an accountant, that is a human resources problem for example.  So our approach is to take a business problem and put different students, from different disciplines on a team and have them come up with a complete solution,” he says.

In this sense, he says companies who might complain that they don’t have any additional work for interns, could benefit from having students take on tasks they may not want to delegate to permanent staff. 

“Businesses need to move away from the mind-state that this is doing the students a favour.  In Namibia, you cannot easily get rid of someone once you have appointed them.  This is an option to gain resources at a fraction of the cost, and it is not a permanent arrangement,” he says.

Another advantage of the CCE’s central approach, he says, is its establishment of a comprehensive database listing all students requiring internship placements, as well as a list of graduates that companies can get hold of through them.

Matters of reward

As for remuneration, Pop says that because there is no legislation currently in place recognising interns as a job category, the centre at present does not set any payment requirements with the companies it works with.

“There are policy discussions currently going on however, which started around at the first national conference on education (in 2011)” he says.

Adding that these discussions are currently at “senior level”, Pop says he hopes to have the resolutions that have emanated from that, to enter debate in parliament between late this year and early 2014.