Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA)
“These funds are used by the Vocational Education and Training Authority (VETA) to ensure sustainability of their vocational trainings,” Deputy Minister for Education and Vocational Training, Jenista Mhagama told the National Assembly yesterday.
She went on to say, money obtained from SDL is also used to train employees from various industries and so far, a total of 1241 workers have benefited.
The deputy minister was responding to a supplementary question by Mustafa Akonay, Mbulu Member of Parliament (Chadema) who wanted to why the government charges the levy in the first place and more from private companies.
According to him, the companies been forced to pay the levy gain nothing from it and further, as far as he is concerned, the charge only works to hurt business development and expansion and that way it effectively creates unemployment because the charged companies fail to hire new staff due to the high operation costs caused by among other things, the Skills Development Levy.
“The levy has in fact benefited these companies because the very people undergoing vocational trainings end up working for the same firms,” the deputy minister clarified to the House.
“If VETA will fail to deliver these trainings then these companies, both private and public will all suffer from the lack of skilled labour severely affecting the entire nation’s development,” she detailed.
Earlier, in her primary question, Magdalena Sakaya, Special Seats (CUF) wanted to know how much of the SDL money is actually making it to VETA and in specific between the two years of 2010 and 2012.
She and the House were informed that since 2010/11-2012/13 fiscal years VETA has received 131.3bn/- channeled from the SDL coffers.
However, Mhagama was also keen to let the legislators know that the law that established VETA in 1994 and amended in 2013 has reduced SDL charges to 5 percent from 6 percent which was paid in the previous years.
SOURCE:
THE GUARDIAN
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