The Nelson Mandela Bay municipality is committing itself in a tangible manner to upgrading skills in the metro in line with the government's Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition.

Acting metro economic development and tourism business unit head Belu Mabandla said on Friday that more money would be made available for skills development initiatives, specifically in the automotive and information and communications technology (ICT) sectors.

Mabandla was speaking at the graduation ceremony of 30 final-year pupils from disadvantaged schools who participated in the automotive experiential career development programme (AECDP). The programme was funded by the municipality, devised by the Automotive Industry Development Centre (AIDC) and implemented by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s department of mechanical engineering. The pupils undertook an intensive two-week programme that exposed them to engineering laboratories and technologies and visits to Continental Tyres and General Motors SA, which followed on a nine-week mathematics development programme.

"I would like to commit, on behalf of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality, to the continuation of funding and support of the AECDP in future," said Mabandla.

Such was the success of this project, she said, that the municipality was committing to the continuation of the programme, as well as replicating it in other sectors, such as ICT.

Mabandla said about R1-million had been invested in the AECDP to date, but was unable to provide any insight into what future requirements or commitments would be. She said the expansion of the programme would aim to involve more school-goers in the programme to expose them to engineering and skills - specifically mathematics and science - needed to study this field.

The AIDC's skills development and training manager, Estelle Gathercole, welcomed the commitment by the municipality.

"We need that quality feeder from school level to complete the black engineering development programme, but half the kids who come from school don't have the high-quality maths and science behind them.

"Also, a lot of them don't know what engineering is. So the only way you can make a difference is to expose them to the engineering field," she said.

The success of the pilot project, initiated last year, can be measured by the fact that 14 of the 30 pupils who participated received bursaries to study at the university this year.