MORE working women with professional academic qualifications are registering with the Makoi Women’s Vocational Training Centre.
This is according to centre manager Shazna Khan who said the COVID-19 had affected not only their operations but the opportunities for their students to return to school.
“Our hours were more practical based, we could not have more women’s classes at the centre so we had to close for three months but after that we did reopen,” she said.
“A lot of them could not attend due to their husbands or whoever was financially supporting them they had been redundant and they could not afford to come to the centre.”
Ms Khan said they did help out in whatever way they could and after the first lot had graduated they received a lot of applications from women with degrees or with postgraduate diplomas.
“They were all applying because they had been made redundant and they did not have a skill to actually start off the business or work towards something if they could not find employment elsewhere.
“So we received a lot of calls and applications and we did try to fit everyone in.
“I think our centre was also affected by the grants that we got over the years as well which had been minimised and reduced but still we never lost hope we continued with the classes.”
Ms Khan said they had managed to graduate all of the women and had started their new program which was aged care and community care.
“Still these women managed to come out of this six months course and they actually had to be graduated last year but because of TC Yasa we had to move their graduation in January.
“So that was our first lot of 21 caregivers that graduated with a national certificate in Aged Care and Community Care.”
She said the enrolment had increased from 2020 as well.
“Before we actually had to take maximum of 20 to 25 participants in each course but now we are taking 30 to 35, just so that we can get these women in and train them so that at least they can be financially stable to start their own small businesses or at least find employment somewhere these skills are used.”
