PPC’s approach to sustainable performance as a nation-building company has always been to invest in its people. The company has been training artisans for 36 years – the work these men and women perform is critical to the ongoing maintenance and operation of factories. This year PPC has trained 66 learners in various trade fields; of these 51 were black learners.

The group training centre (GTC), situated at the Slurry factory in Mafikeng has seen over 30 years of training and skills development undertaken. GTC hosts fully accredited learnerships and skills programmes for all trades. Teams are motivated to achieve the highest qualification throughout their careers, and PPC offers learnerships from fitting and turning, electrical, plater/welder, and millwright, to diesel mechanic.

In order to enhance careers and lives, the company has achieved full accreditation as a service provider with the Mining Qualifications Authority (MQA) – Engineering, as well as ISO 9001:2000 certification. PPC has complemented this with programme approval and a subsequent secondary accreditation as a service provider with the Manufacturing, Engineering and Related SETA (MERSETA). The outcome is a National Certificate which gives full recognition of qualifications throughout South Africa. GTC also offers a number of short courses to enhance skills.

Qualified artisans are increasingly difficult to recruit and retain due to a national shortage of people with skills in this area. Meeting the requirements of the skills development area of the Codes of Good Practice is a very important target for PPC, and black learnerships need to be increased. This is in line with PPC’s own modernisation and expansion drive, requiring increased numbers of artisans well into the future. A decision was made by the PPC board of directors to expand GTC’s facilities to meet the future required number of artisan learners, and to accommodate the growing number of female learners anticipated over the next five years.

The GTC expansion project was officially unveiled in July 2007 by cement operations executive, Pepe Meijer, at the launch of the Operations Academy in Slurry. This R12 million expansion will include a training hall to accommodate 80 delegates (including disabled learners), as well as 40 new rooms (10 housing units).

The expanded GTC conveys a powerful message about PPC’s commitment to life-long learning and skills upliftment for employees, a message that will work positively towards attracting future black talent to the company.

As part of the company’s realigned corporate social investment (CSI) strategy, there is a focus on long-term sustainable community projects that contribute to the upliftment of skills within the cement and construction sectors. The GTC expansion project presented the ideal opportunity and infrastructure to include and develop local communities from settlements in and around Slurry and Mafikeng. PPC is currently training eleven black unemployed, unskilled learners: 10 in the wet trades and one electrical learner.

In recent years, PPC has had increasing numbers of women qualifying as artisans, and the expansion project team was no exception.