Dear Portfolio Committee on Higher Education, Science and Technology, we as the youth of the Republic we are frustrated aswell as tired we as the student committee we have taken initiative since 2019 to inform various stakeholders in this sector but no up to thus far no fruitful response we have proof of contact going from regional director(BALKRYSHN) to tvet(MLANGENI) director to DHET director(SISHI) also the minister incharge of the sector(Dr Blade) but nothing was done we also contacted relevant SETAs(CHIETA & MERSETA) but to no avail.

We are the youth of the North West province who on 2019 were promised an exciting future with sustainability of the long term by Vuselela Tvet College which launched an apprenticeship program for unemployed North west youth.

Background

In 2019 there was a recruitment of engineering apprentices to take part in an Artisan development sub-programme at Vuselela Tvet College. This program was for the following trades and the duration was for 3yrs but the employment contract would be renewed yearly 1st contract was from 2019-2020:

• Electrical *40

• Fitting * 20

• Fitting and turning *20

• Welding *20
• Boilermaking *20
• Millwright * 20
The selection of the apprentices began with writing a psychometric test then after successfully passing that stage you go to the next step of which it was an interview.The 140 students passed the selection & were selected for the programme for these 140 it was exciting times we were excited & happy about the path that lies ahead.
The excitement started to wear down when the students spent up to 3 months without induction & without entering the workshop to begin training.We would come to the training center for the whole 3 months to sit outside and play cards to pass time that’s when doubt started to settle,that there’s something wrong in this programme because there weren’t even training officers appointed to train the students at the time.It was as if they were not prepared & they were not ready to host us from then we started facing problems as students:
LEARNER EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT(VUSELELA TVET COLLEGE)
-The students were put under pressure and were made to sign their contracts under duress without having a chance to read and understand the terms & conditions laid out on the contract we were told “It’s either you sign or you leave the premises and you never come back”.The student reps committee was then formulated by 2021 November it went on to request the copies of the contracts that wers signed by the students,what followed was the college showing us the copy of the contracts to go over it because it didn’t comply with the Acts of the constitution we were then shown a false contract that the college claimed to be the one we signed.We as the student committee we took it upon ourselves to investigate more about the matter and we found that the are 3 formats of the learner employment contract with different amendments & conditions.
Contract 1:The majority of the students signed after being successfully selected
Contract 2:It was signed by the students of the same class of 2019 but were selected after the 1st batch that was selected to come and fill the spaces that were still open to make the class 140 students as a whole.
Contract 3:The one we were shown by the College at a formal meeting held with management including the senior account officer(Principal Lehoko).
All these contracts contain different formats,amendments and conditions.We had also asked for the original learner employment contracts that were signed by the students to be made available for students to go over them but until now nothing has materialized.
CHIETA LEARNER AGREEMENT CONTRACT(SETA)
-The CHIETA contracts were also filled & signed in this manner an individual had to fill and sign his/her contract then sign on each page and also invite a witness to sign on each page as a witness which was the student next to you because at that moment we were grouped into 6 groups under different trades.The contracts were filled & signed successfully by the students & they were sent to the Principal to sign them to then get sent to CHIETA for them to be uploaded to their database. The same time the committee requested the employment contract from the College we also requested for learner agreement contract that we had signed with the funder(SETA).The copies of the contracts were sent to Matlosana Campus by CHIETA early this year(Feb 2022).The students went to fetch each of their copies only to find that it was not the contract we had signed as students that were supposed to be funded by CHIETA but it was a new format that we didn’t even know of & what was established from it was that our personal information was also filled in for us by the same handwriting as well as our signatures were forged including those of the witnesses into this unknown CHIETA contract.