Gaps Noted In Training

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31942, 20 March 1969, Page 26

Gaps Noted In Training

An industrial relations conference has been proposed by the manufacturing and labour committees of the National Development Conference.

In its report, released today, the manufacturing committee says it believes points such a conference should consider could include a joint management-labour policy on multi-shift work and better provision for training union representatives.

The committee says it regards it as “a matter of urgency” that adequate incentives, especially in pay and status, should be given to attract and retain trained manpower in desirable industries. The report says the preliminary conclusions from a survey on manpower by the labour committee were that there were already shortages of skilled manpower in all industries, either because of a lack of training, or because trained persons had moved out of their skilled occupations.

Because of swift technological changes many gaps in training were beginning to appear.

The committee considers there is too much emphasis on waiting for the demand for skills before the facilities for training in those skills were established. Establishment of training facilities in expectation of demand would be a wiser course of ac on. It recommends the establishment of permanent manpower planning, research and forecasting machinery to continue the work of the conference, and a survey to determine the skills required in the next 10 years, so that training programmes can be prepared. It says therv should be more graduate technologists for industry; that technical institutes should have more freedom in drawing up their courses in collaboration with industry and other bodies; and that the Government should consider the apprenticeship system, with a view to its replacement, alteration or supplementation.