By Our Reporter
Hima Cement has announced it is sending 10 graduate engineers for training in leading global cement operations in Spain and North America in a bid to develop local skills for the mining sector.
According to Hima’s Organization and Human Resources Director, Irene Wamanga Naibo, the graduate engineers drawn from local universities, will spend 12 to 18 months on the practical job training.
In the last 3 years, Hima Cement has recruited over 40 graduate engineers and provided internships for over 100 students to provide practical mining skills thus creating a new pool of skills that the mining industry can tap into.
“In the last 3 years, our staff has worked from Nigeria to Poland with stops in-between. We have also benefited from skills from Korea, Canada among others,” she said.
Naibo believes skills enhancement should be an ongoing program for the Mining, oil and gas sector.
“LafargeHolcim recognized that its growth and expansion across Sub-Sahara Africa would not happen without a structured resourcing plan. Our business needs people to run it. The management of this plan is as important as determining where limestone reserves are. Private businesses have a critical role to play: they not only have a moral imperative, but it also makes business sense too. Companies can’t just sit back and wait for fully trained workers to appear out of thin air and start queuing at their factory gates and office doors,” she added.
The 2014 ‘Survey to foster opportunities for Uganda in the Oil and Gas Sector’ demonstrates a clear demand for skills that will be required to drive the value creation from the oil and gas sector
It is estimated 79% of the youth in the Ugandan Labor force is literate and there are 480,000 tertiary graduates every year. The education does not however equal skill development yet there is a demand for 9700 mid to high skill staff in the industry.
Naibo explained the literacy level provides private companies with a base on which to address the skills development agenda.
Besides limestone, Uganda is endowed with other high value mineral deposits like gold, copper, phosphates, tin, rare earth and vermiculite. Having a pool of local experts is an incentive to investors looking to undertake large scale mining activities.
