‘Create database for skilled personnel to leverage expertise for national development’

SKILLS Audit and Development Permanent Secretary, Ambassador Rudo Chitiga, has stressed the need for the country to create a database for its skilled personnel including knowledge of their whereabouts so that it leverages their expertise for national development.

She also challenged universities to develop a graduate tracker programme, which will be used to assess the relevance of their programmes in line with international standards.

Despite extensive human capital development, concerns have been raised that the country does not have a database of its skilled force.
At the moment, once a graduate leaves university or college there is little relationship with institutions except those who join the institutions’ alumni society.

Latest statistics show that more than 33 000 students graduated from the country’s universities last year with Midlands State University producing the highest figure.

Speaking during a skills audit consultation meeting at the Lupane State University (LSU), Amb Chitiga said there is a need for the country to prioritise database creation on skilled personnel.

She said university tracker programmes will promote accountability for the institutions. The Ministry is holding nationwide consultation meetings to establish the country’s skills gap and has since covered Bulawayo, Matabeleland North and Matabeleland South.

“We discovered yesterday that our centres of higher learning, not all of them do tracer studies. They have no idea once you graduate where you go or what you do.

“I just came back from Rwanda where I attended a meeting where it was revealed that 60 percent of the graduates find jobs within a year of completing studies as universities there conduct tracer studies,” said Amb Chitiga.

“They trace, they know where every student is. That’s something that should be very easy as it also brings a sense of accountability to the institutions as you are not educated just for education.”

Amb Chitiga said the tracer programme should cascade across sectors of the economy. She said a lot of Zimbabweans, even highly skilled experts leave the country for other nations yet there is no consolidated database on such individuals. Amb Chitiga said the country is losing on potential revenue that can be generated through bilateral relations with other nations.

“At the moment, how else do we use our diaspora? I know we use them very well through their remittances, we see a lot of queues at Mukuru. We could use them so that their contribution becomes a brain game in terms of new technologies of teaching new technologies that they are exposed to,” she said.

“They can become a part of our supply chain on skills development and even have them conduct guest lectures whenever they are home.”
Amb Chitiga said at some point, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (Zesa) wanted to identify the country’s engineers who had moved to countries like Australia but no official database could be established.

She said the only data was found from social groupings which makes the country fail to negotiate strategically with other countries.

“There’s no source of information for knowledge of where our diaspora is. We need to know who wants what from our country. We are also a country with a lot of experts, but we never seem to know who and where they are,” said Amb Chitiga.

“We need a database of retired experts and see to what extent they could be gap fillers in skills. Whether they could come as advisors in different areas but not to take over employment.”

Amb Chitiga said only 29 percent of the population get five Ordinary level passes and 71 percent are not academically oriented.

“We need to develop programmes to cater for those otherwise, we are just throwing out the other 71 percent. Whatever you want to try and do, people want five Ordinary levels including English and Mathematics,” she said. —chroncile