The Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA), Dr Zweli Mkhize welcomed 93 young graduates in the built environment fields who are part of the Young Graduates Programme of the Municipal Infrastructure Support Agent (MISA).
The programme, over two to three-years will provide young graduates with work exposure and structured mentorship through partnership with professional bodies towards registering as professionals in the fields of Engineering (Civil and Electrical), Project and Construction Management, Town and Regional Planning, Geographic Information System (GIS), and Environmental Studies.
The Young Graduate Programme aims to achieve the following objectives;
- Provide candidates with work exposure and structured mentorship;
- Increase the number of professionally registered municipal officials;
- Produce professionals for improved municipal infrastructure provisioning and management;
- Support low and medium capacity municipalities with recruitment of qualified professionals; and
- Creation of skills pipeline for local government.
MISA is currently implementing the following skills development programmes:
- Young Graduate Programme;
- Experiential Learnership Programme;
- Apprenticeship Programme;
- Technical Bursary Scheme;
- Technical Skills Training for Municipal Officials; and
- An Artisan Recognition of Prior Learning Programme.
The graduates will be deployed in municipalities. More than 90% of the newly recruited young graduates are placed in the 55 low capacity municipalities that are receiving support from MISA to accelerate their Municipal Infrastructure Grant expenditure.
In the 2018/19 financial year, MISA has more than 150 young graduates, distributed as per the table below:
Profession |
Male |
Female |
Total |
Civil Engineers |
29 |
17 |
46 |
Electrical Engineers |
11 |
2 |
13 |
Project and Construction Managers |
5 |
2 |
7 |
Town and Regional Planners |
9 |
7 |
16 |
Geographic Information Systems Practitioners |
0 |
1 |
1 |
Environmental Scientists |
3 |
7 |
10 |
Fifty nine percent of the newly recruited young graduates are engineers. This is meant to increase the number of professionally registered engineers in municipalities.