(From Engineering News) -- Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor is going to target South Africa’s Top 100 technology companies to urge them to take young engineers for experiential workplace training, she told Engineering News Online on Thursday. This will mark an expansion of a programme her department is already running, to get work places for newly graduated engineers so that they can obtain the required practical experience.

“We’ve felt that it is very important we \[South Africa\] have qualified engineers,” she explained. “They must achieve full qualification status. They must complete their experiential workplace learning. So we decided to invest in young people and talk to the business sector. The response was incredible.”

This programme was started in February last year but has so far been focused on engineering companies. The Department of Science and Technology (DST) partners with the companies taking part and provides support for the young engineers to complete their training. So far, the department has invested more than R20-million in this programme and has enabled 90 young engineers to undergo workplace training.

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