Evaluation of the Monyetla Work Readiness ... - Business Trust

• the Business Trust project office’s commitment to ensuring the project’s success througheffective communication and the alignment of the project to real needs in the sector.Project drawbacks communicated emanated from the following;• Eighty seven percent (87%) of employers complained about the excessive amount ofpaperwork required by the project office and how this distracted from priority projectinitiatives. They felt that the project office should in future resort to electronic forms,especially when it came to completing learner agreements.• Another issue raised by 59% of participants was that learner stipends were very low and infive participating consortia had to be subsidised by host employers.4.6 Evaluation of the Funding Model4.6.1 The Project BudgetThe Project budget consisted of two components: The first component was the learnership grantamounting to R17,1 million and intended to fund the training of 1,000 learners. This grant was madeavailable by the DoL and channeled through the National Skills Fund to the Business Trust.Originally the total amount included VAT at 14% subjected to all line items including stipends. It waslater realised that VAT was not enforceable on the stipend line item, thereby yielding funding for anadditional 99 places. A ruling by SARS not to enforce VAT on the entire grant yielded another 154places. A total of 253 places were added to the pool at a net cost of R13,650 VAT per learner at theoriginal budgeted total of R17.1million.The second component of the programme was the cost of project management, publicity andevaluation. This came to a total cost of R3,025 million and is broken down per line item in Table 13.Table 13: Project Management BudgetBudget ItemCostsPublicity (video and brochure) R150,000Project ManagementR2,050,000Evaluation R825,000Total CostR3,025,000Evidence shows that a BPO&O work readiness programme tailored to ensure 70% employmentrates can be successfully implemented with a budget of R13,650 per learner.4.6.2 Payment of Learner StipendsFifty-nine percent (59%) of the consortium signatory lead members indicted that learner stipendswere too low and could have been increased by a minimum of R500 per learner, especiallyconsidering that learnerships were targeted at people from poor communities and the mostimpoverished tended to be located far from business hubs making transport costs prohibitive. Five ofthe host employers had stepped in to increase the learner stipend, with two of them increasing it toR2,500, and three increasing it to R1,500.The majority of training providers who were tasked with disbursing learner stipends stated thatthese were paid on time. Learner stipends were considered a priority again because most of thelearners came from poor communities and the learnership would have been characterised by highabsenteeism had stipends not been paid on time.Only one consortium indicated that stipend payments had been a challenge at the beginning of theprogramme, with the lead signatory member having to step in to cover stipend payments because46