Today, the Construction & Property Skills Council had its first meeting of this year 2019 at the VIT conference room for about 2 hours.
The purpose of this meeting was to have the council members to do a short presentation on training needs on each sectors they represent.
Most of the members who attended the short meeting highlighted the lack of trained workers as their main challenge. Even after five or 30 years of experience in their respective industry, each member stressed the importance of introducing courses in their field of industry, such as civil engineering, surveying, and knowledge of basic in cleaning and hygiene, and carpentry.
Mr Cyrille Mainguy owns a private engineering company, in Port-Vila. Mr Mainguy explained that his company lacked of well-trained engineers, so he had to train them and pay them as well. Once the employee has the required skills to do the job, he applies for a job somewhere else. It’s not a win-win situation and it is also currently happening in other industry sectors.
The Construction & Property Skills Council is comprised of 12 subsectors with their representatives as follows:
- Surveying and Spatial information – represented by Mr Noel Naki, Geodic Surveyor at Department of Lands and Survey
- Waste management – represented by Chris Kaltabang, C&K Rubbish Removal
- Pest Management – George Regenvanu, Ezzykill
- Property development, sales and management – Catherine Boudier Contant, First National Real Estates
- Cleaning – Rex Sano Tavi, Pacific Supplies
- Inspection and testing – Nathaniel Bule, MBN Consulting
- Building Construction – Charlie Robert, CWR Construction
- Carpentry – Robert Toa, RNGO Eden
- Security – David Natuman, Maximum Security
- Building design / architecture – Cyrille Mainguy, Mainguy Consulting Engineer & Project Management
- Fire Protection – Jacqueline Temakon, Fire Safety Supply
- Plumbing – Adam Chamberlain, Switched on Services
Only seven members attended the meeting, including the Chairman of the council, Mr Charlie Robert.
A set of training packages was distributed to each member for verification: each member of the council will be contacting 3 other people from their same sector of industry to establish an Industry Expert Panel (EIP). The EIP will then consider the training packages (TP) and decide on the necessity of the existing units of competency developed and listed in the TP.
These training packages will be discussed during the nest meeting which is yet to be scheduled.
VQA is the national regulator of the PSET system of Vanuatu and works in partnership with Vanuatu Skills Partnership and the Tertiary Education Directorate to improve not only the quality of education in the PSET system, but also to improve human resource skills to meet the skills shortages.
VQA also works in close relationship with industries. Under the VQA Act No.1 of 2014, Part 2, section 15, VQA has the responsibility to establish Industry Skills Councils (ISC) to advise the Authority on workforce development and skills needs.