by NKHENSANI NKUNA
POLOKWANE, (CAJ News) – LIMPOPO Province will host the National Tourism Career Expo (NTCE) in September at the new Peter Mokaba Stadium in Polokwane.
The three-day event will start on Friday, September 20. Thousands of learners from across the region are expected to flock to the provincial capital city to learn more about careers in the tourism industry.
The primary target groups do not only include high school learners from grade 9-12, but also technical vocational education and training (TVET) college and university students, educators and unemployed tourism graduates.
The Limpopo Province was officially handed the rights to the expo by the Gauteng Province in May at the Africa’s Travel Indaba in Durban. This was after Gauteng’s term of hosting the flagship event had ended.
The handover was witnessed by the former deputy minister of tourism Fish Mahlalela, the chief executive officer of Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality and Sport Sector Education and Authority (CATHSSETA) Marks Thibela and other stakeholders.
The Limpopo Tourism Agency has been appointed as the fund manager of the event, while the Polokwane Municipality, as a stakeholder, will provide the venue and infrastructure for free.
During the handover ceremony at the indaba, Mahlalela said: “The whole purpose of the NCTE is to bridge the information gap between industry, government, learners and educators. The Department of Tourism, through its Tourism National Tourism Sector Strategy, has, among others, identified a need to address skills shortages in the tourism sector by training and building capacity of unemployed youth and graduates in especially critical and scarce skills in the hospitality and tourism services sector, hence the NTCE was born to intentionally create a pool of talent for the sector,” he said.
Thibela said CATHSSETA was duty bound to support the initiative by facilitating skills development in all the six subsectors of the industry.
“With unemployment of 33.5% in the country, we really have to intensify and massify skills development training,” Thibela said.
The upcoming expo is a partnership between the South African Tourism Department, the Limpopo Department of Economic, Development, Environment and Tourism, LTA and CATHSSETA.
– CAJ News