A GRADUATION ceremony for young chefs took place in the Eastern Cape recently.
The 44 graduating chefs were part of the Department of tourism’s National Youth Chefs training programme.
Tourism Minister Tokozile Xasa told the graduates not only to focus on their own employment but also on job creation, which would add to community wealth creation.
“Government is investing in our country’s youth in order for them to become global citizens.”
The department-funded R74 million programme is managed by the South African Chefs Association to train unemployed youth, between the ages of 18 and 35 years, in the culinary arts.
The pilot programme first ran over 10 months in 2011 and 800 South Africans graduated with a City and Guilds-certified qualification in food preparation and cooking.
Xasa also visited the newly built Cecilia Makiwane Hospital in Mdantsane, where she was extremely impressed by the new state-of-the-art kitchen at the hospital.
She told the management of the facility to consider offering employment opportunities to some of the new chefs.
Xasa encouraged the hospital’s management to work with Mdantsane residents to establish step-down facilities whereby residents could open their homes for a fee to recovering patients to be housed in homes in neighbouring areas.
“The department’s expanded public works programme is one of the vehicles used to help realise the objectives of the human resources skills strategy.
“Through expanded works, the department is able to respond and create more employment opportunities.”
