Very seldom has the death of anyone grabbed the soul of a nation the way the untimely and horrific death of Taegrin Morris did. The South African Institution of Civil Engineering (SAICE) has expressed its deepest sympathies and highlighted how an incident like this could be connected to the skills shortage facing South Africa.

It is being said that young people are wandering the streets without aim or incentive to turn their lives to productive ends. SAICE argued that, if training programmes were rolled out where young people could become actively engaged in the South African economy, this dire situation could be reversed. The institute believes a strategic plan is needed; one where all stakeholders, including government, should stop talking, and do the job. Street committees could identify individual problems, report them and then act to solve issues timeously.

The shocking estimate that between 30% and 40% of all learners entering Grade 1 fall out of the system and never reach Grade 8 is disconcerting, says SAICE. These are the young people wandering the streets aimlessly, about whom communities are concerned. They are in this situation because:

• they have already failed grades
• they cannot read and write
• they cannot do maths/arithmetic
• schools are not equipped with enough remedial educators to cope with the numbers
• all special schools, where these learners should go, are always full with waiting lists of two or more years
• primary schools do not or cannot assist in finding these learners help in the form of psychologists who can assess them in the first place
• primary schools cannot assist in finding these learners places in special schools.

“South Africa cannot ignore this group. Nobody talks about them. Government programmes are aimed at those learners who have a matric or even Grade 10, but this aimless group is the forgotten generation. It is their time to be assisted and it needs to be done now. The socio-economic opportunity cost is too high if they are ignored.”

SAICE believes it plays a role in this because the civil engineering and construction industries have a vast number of career options and create job opportunities for unskilled people. “However, the political will has to be there to roll out projects for the industry to play its role. Having said that, industry must be engaged at the outset of government’s planning initiatives.”

Moe Shaik, at the 2014 Infrastructure Africa Conference in Johannesburg, commented in Engineering News on 21 July 2014, “If we leave infrastructure development to the politicians, we’ll have a world full of white elephants; if we leave it to the engineers, we’ll have a world no one can live in; and if we leave it to the financiers, we’ll have a world no one can afford.”

SAICE has repeatedly implored government to make use of its members’ expertise in the planning and execution of projects, and has issued another request to government. “We are here, we are willing and we are able to help our government create jobs, and reduce our streets of criminal vectors that destroy families and communities.”