Media Release: Paving the way forward: Garden Route Skills Mecca collaborates with CATHSSETA on open platform

For Immediate Release
8 September 2021

The Garden Route Skills Mecca (GRSM) team, under the stewardship of the Garden Route District Municipality (GRDM), spearheads progressive engagements with stakeholders to ensure that information about skills development in the Garden Route is accessible, understood and embraced. One recent intervention was to draw the Culture, Art, Tourism, Hospitality, and Sport Sector Education and Training Authority, a Sector Education and Training Authorities (CATHSSETA) closer to ‘home’. This was done by discussing matters pertaining to funding, registration, accreditation and how COVID-19 has impacted their systems and processes, amongst others.

 “The session included a wide array of stakeholders, in particular those who deal with CATHSSETA (hotels, B&Bs, AirBNBs, resorts, etc.) and Local Economic Development (LED) representatives from all seven (7) local municipalities (Bitou, Knysna, George, Mossel Bay, Greater Oudtshoorn, Kannaland and Hessequa) in the Garden Route,” said Alderman Memory Booysen, Executive Mayor for GRDM. “My Council has also taken note of the GRSM’s quarterly forum and its progressive implementation methodology, which involves frequent stakeholder collaboration,” said Booysen.

CATHSSETA attended the last forum held on 20 August and decided to approach the GRSM Skills Coordinator, Dr Florus Prinsloo, about a future collaboration with the GRSM. Dr Prinsloo then acted swiftly by arranging a platform where stakeholders could iron out matters concerning the Sector.

The presentation by Martha Collett, who is responsible for looking after the Western, Eastern and Northern Cape on behalf of CATHSSETA, was done concisely and to the point. She provided comprehensive details to local District Stakeholders about developments in the Sector. At the start of her presentation, she said: “The Fourth Industrial Revolution has been accelerated because of the COVID-19 pandemic. E-learning is now becoming the norm, and we have to all think differently about the mode in which we deliver education”.

One of the critical questions she posed was: “Are we preparing learners for the workplace of the future?”

She further elaborated about the type of sub-sectors included in CATHSSETA by saying that if a person unpacks the representation of each Sector in our SETA, the representation looks as follows:

• Culture and Heritage and Art 7%;
• Conservation 4%;
• Travel and Tourism 9%;
• Hospitality 72%;
• Sport, Recreation and Fitness 7%;
• Gaming and lotteries 1%; and
• 95% of stakeholders are from the Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) Sector.

Stakeholders, especially employers, were encouraged to keep an eye out for the next ‘Discretionary Funding’ window that will open in November 2021. Already, the Hospitality Sector in the District can start planning to take on learners into their business as the economy hopefully re-opens and Tourism picks up as South Africa moves through Spring into Summer.

Similar engagements with other SETAs are also planned by the GRDM Skills Mecca Team to keep the region up to date with all possible opportunities for learning and development.

Download the CATHSSETA Presentation.

In case you missed it, watch the video here.

ENDS