| Quality Skills |
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| FIETA is proud to serve the South African forest industries, which is a world
leader in plantation forests. To maintain this world leadership position, FIETA
is committed to producing skills that are world class in quality. |
|
| Beneficiation of Trees |
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| Forests, as a renewable resource, provide the raw materials for furniture,
wood products, and pulp and paper. South Africa's status as a world leader
inspires confidence in foreign consumers of these products, a confidence in the
constancy of supply. The creative challenge for all people in the forest
industries is to optimise the beneficiation of trees. FIETA helps to develop
the requisite skills to meet this creative challenge. |
|
| EVEN THE TALLEST OF TREES WITH THE WIDEST OF TRUNKS
AND RICHEST LEAVES ONCE BEGAN LIFE AS THE SMALLEST SEED. |
|
| Critical Skills Shortage |
|
| 78% of the forest industry workforce is either semi- or unskilled, there are
critical shortage of craft or skilled workers, technicians, and professional
managers. As the wage system has historically proven to be an efficient and
effective means of wealth distribution, it is necessary to skill people
incrementally in order to ensure their upward social mobility. The quality of
skills ensures a certain quality of life. |
|
| SMMEs |
|
| SMMEs contribute 42% to the GDP in South Africa, and have proven to be the
creators of jobs, FIETA helps so sustain and to create SMMEs. FIETA facilities
the delivery of education and training of workers in SMMEs and encourage Skills
Development Facilitators to service SMMEs. |
|
| HIV/AIDS |
|
| HIV/AIDS has not been classified as a notifiable disease FIETA has found it
difficult to collect data. There is empirical, and not scientific, evidence of
its negative effects on productivity. HIV/AIDS is a special project of FIETA,
which aims to educate workers and certain targeted school children under 15
years of age on sexuality within the context of life skills and communication. |
|
| Disability |
|
| FIETA views the disabled not as people without abilities but people who are
differently enabled. FIETA does not take a two dimensional view of the disabled
from the physical and/or mental perspective. FIETA takes a four dimensional
view of the disabled, i.e., people who face social disadvantages, cultural
prejudices, psychological pressures and physical and/or mental impairments. |
|
| Early Childhood Development |
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| FIETA encourages government, private sector, and Non Profit Organisations to
focus on early childhood development, where the foundation of mathematics,
science, and design and technology are laid. |
|
| New Education Models |
|
| In the implementation of learnership and skills programmes, FIETA encourages
Skills Development Facilitators to implement cognitive strategies and
content-based instructional models. |
|
| Learnerships and Skills Programmes |
|
| With Quality Assurance of education and training as its core function,
learnerships and skills programmes from the cornerstone of FIETA's activities,
by which the performance of FIETA is measurable. While learnerships result in
qualifications, skills programmes do not, but are portable into learnerships
and earn credits on the National Qualifications Framework. |
|
| Integrated Strategy |
|
| FIETA encourages industries in the four chambers to transcend their current
fragmented strategies and to create an intergrated national strategy to meet
the standards of international quality control and the challenges of global
competitiveness. FIETA encourages domestic and foreign consumption of tree
related products and domestic and foreign direct investments in the forest
Industries of South Africa. |
|
| Ecology |
|
| FIETA as the green heritage SETA, will manage the National Skills Revolution
within the forest industries with ecological responsibility. |
