RMI announces semi-finalists of WorldSkills competition

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The competition formed part of RMI's exhibition at this year's South African Automotive Week which took place from 14-17 October at Gallagher Estate in Midrand, Gauteng.

"The RMI cares and has a vested interest in automotive industry's future skills. The WorldSkills competition is a great initiative to showcase and attract school leavers to pursue automotive career as artisans is in line with our goal to elevate the status of trade career awareness and development. Joining forces with like-minded industry partners to host this competition is one way we are supporting the 'Decade of the Artisan' drive in South Africa," says Jakkie Olivier, CEO at RMI.

The finalists for each motor trade skill were:

• Spray Painting: Ntebaleng Seema and Rabelani Malema.
  
• Autobody Repairs: Bongani Nkosi and Thabiso Mohale.
  
• Automotive Technology: Willem Nel and Jason dos Santos Maraou.

These finalists will be going on to the national finals, which will be hosted at the AutoMechanika Johannesburg Expo in May next year. One finalist from each discipline will then earn the honour of representing South Africa in the 2015 WorldSkills competition in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Essential contribution

"This is the first time that the three motor skills have been included as an integral part of a bigger event exposing the participants to the general flow of the passing public. Hopefully its attraction has raised awareness that will promote and facilitate through cooperative action a national awareness of the essential contribution skill excellence can make to the achievement of economic success and personal fulfilment," says Andre Vermeulen, technical delegate for WorldSkills South Africa.

"We see WorldSkills as a mechanism to address skills shortage by attracting the youth to technical careers," says Marwaan Davids, national training director at the RMI. "We set out to replicate the setting of the international WorldSkills competition standards at the national trials. We needed stakeholders and partners to achieve our objective and we were fortunate in the like-mindedness of the sponsors. We had mixed emotions about embarking on this initiative at this scale and the results were absolutely phenomenal."