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Thread: Competence.

  1. #11
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    Tec0, what you said is relevant to Competence. You take a person who is not academic, give him the basics and gradually bring him up to speed. He's paid a trainee salary until he qualifies. It's a system that worked for years
    even in Rhodesia - the government-run institutions all had apprenticeships in place so that young non-academic people could enter training without 'O' levels.

    If you were interested in computers, but weren't so hot in maths, you could study with the Rhodesia Railways to become a computer engineer. It was a long course because you studied at the technical college for 6 months then worked in the Railway's computer rooms, then back to college. Your college was sponsored by the RR and when you qualified, you worked for the RR for two or three years.

    The method produced qualified men and women with solid practical experience who could competently operate in their environments.

    Still on competence, have you read "A Message To Garcia" by Elbert Hubbard 1899? Google it and read it. When have to instill this message in all our staff and pay attention to it ourselves.

  2. #12
    Diamond Member tec0's Avatar
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    A lesion in words I am sure. Behold the woman/ man that works when the boss is away or at home. Behold the woman/ man that works hard no matter the hour of day. So poetic yet in a way lost. For workers have died at the whim of a foreman braving melted steel burning into skin and bone till 90% of them was nothing more than battered bone his lasts words “you killed me” The second worker may have been or may not have been dead on impact we will never know.

    This foreman is to be reinstated his case disappeared. But still there is more than one story for I remember a boy that knew little about the dangers he had to brave. His boss if you will, order him to inspect valves. These where no ordinary valves for the pressure was immense and the temperature excessive. The boy and yes he was just a boy still young did his boss’s bidding and died for it. His skin melted to the bone his flesh burned white by this invisible horror.

    Now people will state competence or incompetence, I blame the companies. They had the ability and recourses to make a simple 20 minute introduction video. Those 20 minutes could have saved 3 lives.

    For the letter was indeed delivered without any questions asked. These are just 3 souls that did there bidding without question and for nothing more than a whim. Now I did not mention these happenings to win an argument or to invoke sympathy.

    I wrote this to point that yes loyalty is important for success. I wrote this story to point out that even experience can fail. But above all I wrote this to point out that if Rowan was shot would his sacrifice be noted as it is now?
    peace is a state of mind
    Disclaimer: everything written by me can be considered as fictional.

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    you got to ask yourself what ever happened to the old railway appy schools and durban electricity training centres etc...i visited my old appy training centre and was rather taken back...it looked like a mortury...no movement...when i finally found someone and asked what happened to the 250 + appys who use to frequent the centre daily...i was told there arent even 250 appys in the entire country at the moment...and we wonder why our service industry has gone to the dogs...(an insult to dogs)...if the goverment doesnt start putting money back into the training centres instead of their new cars and houses and buddies bank accounts...this country will keep going down hill until eventually we will become like all the other african countries in africa...call me a pesimist but quite honestly i cant see it getting any better any time soon.

    every single day on the news or headlines in the newspaper there is some goverment official being named and shamed for his dodgy acts...

    ever since the new goverment took over things and just deteriated...i dont know how long they can blame apparteheid...but i am sure they will use the race card for as long as they can get away with it...from a mechanical point of view we can be lucky the old goverment built such good power stations...water treatment works and had such a jacked up public work...because if it didnt we would be floating around in our own crap without electricity...and this is a fact...i was gona say i wonder what happened to the millions which where spent on these project...but we all know the answer to that question...just read the newspaper.

    i noticed the other day they finally after 3 years cut the grass back on the side of the freeway or should i say from the middle of the freeway so now there are 2 lanes again...problem now is they should have rather left the grass long at least you couldnt see the piles of rubbish and stompies thrown from the pigs out their vehicles.

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    Diamond Member AndyD's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by murdock View Post
    hat happened to the 250 + appys who use to frequent the centre daily...i was told there arent even 250 appys in the entire country at the moment...
    When it's fashionable to give across the board salary hikes regardless of ability and productivity the tradesmen who are competent and productive leave for pastures greener. The apprenticeship programs no longer make good financial sense.

    If you pay people by their worth then the good guys will stay and train more good guys and so on the cycle goes. This is true across the board from engineers to nurses, from dentists to school teachers. If you don't pay them their worth the next time you take stock there's nothing left but dead wood.
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    In a country where nurses and teachers strike & run amok, where school kids toi, toi, refuse to write exams and demand 25% given to them for free, where a policeman "accidentally" shoots a matric pupil dead during a school kid strike because he doesn't realize that bullets ricochet, where 9 kids are killed on the way to a school with no teachers - to be taken to a hospital with no nurses...

    ...you say the problem is that "people are not being paid their worth" and that is why people are not training appies....

    Ooookkk, I think that the South African youth are lazy and stupid and I also think that the majority of adults are lazy and stupid. They want democracy with no responsibility, they want degrees and diplomas with no education, they want housing without paying for services, they want electricity but steal the cables, they want salary increases but less work, they want, they want, they demand....

    The country is not training appies because the youth are too good to be trained, they want to walk into a job and earn R15K a month. They want a 51% share in a business that they didn't build and don't understand. How do you teach a man to fish if he wants a golden fishing pole, for you to bait the hook and then pull in the fish for him when it bites (while that same man is peeing in the river and selling the fishing tackle on the sly)

    It's very simple, if they don't want to learn then they can stay at home - their parents have earned the democratic right for them to sit on their butts on a street corner and smoke dope rather than going to school and taking responsibility for their own lives.

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    Quote Originally Posted by adrianh View Post
    ...you say the problem is that "people are not being paid their worth" and that is why people are not training appies....

    Ooookkk,
    Maybe you misunderstood my post or perhaps I worded it ambiguously. I was advocating stopping the ridiculous pay increases across the board and rather paying people according to their productivity and ability.

    I'm saying that the competent and productive people are not paid their worth because the incompetent are becoming more overpaid with across the board pay hikes.

    Apprenticeships cost a fortune and are an investment in the apprentices future output after he/she is qualified. If, after qualifying they aren't payed their worth then they pack up and leave with their qualification and experience then no return is seen on that investment. If apprentices are leaving en mass after qualifying then the whole system is unsustainable.

    Quote Originally Posted by adrianh View Post
    I think that the South African youth are lazy and stupid and I also think that the majority of adults are lazy and stupid. They want democracy with no responsibility, they want degrees and diplomas with no education, they want housing without paying for services, they want electricity but steal the cables, they want salary increases but less work, they want, they want, they demand....
    This is your opinion. I'm sure there's a percentage of the population who fit into every one of those patterns of behavior which you have outlined but lumping all the youth or all adults in one bracket is an inaccurate generalisation.
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  7. #17
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    This is your opinion. I'm sure there's a percentage of the population who fit into every one of those patterns of behavior which you have outlined but lumping all the youth or all adults in one bracket is an inaccurate generalisation.
    In my experience the generalization holds true for the majority. Only people who are stupid and lazy dance around the streets when they should be teaching, nursing or learning.

    I have no sympathy for any of them, if the teachers don't want to teach, and the students don't want to learn, that's fine.

    If the young people don't want to go to college and get N1 or N6 and are to lazy to be apprentices, then that's fine too.

    Don't blame the companies for the fact that the youth are too lazy to learn.

  8. #18
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by murdock View Post
    you got to ask yourself what ever happened to the old railway appy schools and durban electricity training centres etc...
    Practically, the Training Boards that financed them were dismantled to make way for the SETA system, and apprenticeships were replaced with learnerships, OBE, unit standards, skills course etc. Hindsight shows it wasn't the best of decisions, but there you go - what's done is done (and happily the *sshole who was really the primary cause of this change is no longer in office). We live with the consequences and at least there are signs of change in training systems again, hopefully this time for the better.
    Quote Originally Posted by adrianh View Post
    Only people who are stupid and lazy dance around the streets when they should be teaching, nursing or learning.

    I have no sympathy for any of them, if the teachers don't want to teach, and the students don't want to learn, that's fine.

    If the young people don't want to go to college and get N1 or N6 and are to lazy to be apprentices, then that's fine too.

    Don't blame the companies for the fact that the youth are too lazy to learn.
    Be careful before you blame those youth (or the teachers and nurses too, come to think of it) either.

    I have so many problems with this statement it's hard to know where to begin in a constructive manner. Gonna have to think about it.

    For now I'm going to say you have to consider environment and leadership before you get too judgemental. Yes, there are problems, but you have to look below the surface to see what the real problem is, and it certainly isn't stupidity or laziness.

  9. #19
    Site Caretaker Dave A's Avatar
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    Stupidity vs ignorance.

    Stupidity is doing something wrong when you really should have known better.
    Ignorance is doing something wrong because you didn't know better.

    Stupidity arises from a personal condition.
    Ignorance is heavily influenced by circumstance and environment.

    To call a person stupid is an insult to that person's intelligence. Intelligence and education are two very different things.

    I suggest to call the majority of South Africans stupid when the actual "problem" is the poor foundation of education is grossly insulting and entirely unfair.

    Little surprise people take offence - after all, they're not fools.

    Laziness I'll tackle tomorrow (unless there are any volunteers) - but here's a thought to chew on (seeing as most of the people on this site seem to have a reasonable work ethic) -

    Where does your work ethic come from?

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    Fair enough, but what is the problem then?

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