Skills aren't welcome
27/05/2007 15:29
By: Sizwekazi Jekwa

Johannesburg - At a brunch with some friends last Sunday, I had the third conversation concerning the difficulties involved in acquiring work permit for foreign nationals in South Africa.

I've found that the issue has become a regular dinner conversation piece because any professional who works in SA will somehow be affected by it.

Some express concern as employers, because they can't obtain work permits for highly skilled individuals they're desperate to hang on to.

Others - as family members married to or related to foreigners - can't seem to figure out how to get their hands on work permits. Others, again, are concerned friends who've watched the suffering of their colleagues and friends with growing sympathy.

Nevertheless, something very strange is going on at SA's department of home affairs when nobody can obtain a work permit - no matter how necessary his/her particular skills are to the economy.

Is there perhaps a policy adjustment that needs to take place there? Doesn't the department realise the important role these skilled workers can play in SA's economic development?

Undeniable skills shortage

As many of us are all too aware, one of the biggest constraints to SA's economic growth is its skills shortage. There's an undeniable shortage of people - black and white - who have the necessary skills we need to reach our 6% growth target.

SA is not only suffering a skills shortage; it also has limited training capacity, and the capacity shortages aren't only limited to a lack of training facilities but also the unavailability of competent trainers in the disciplines needed by our economy.

Part of the role of initiatives and programmes such as the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) are to find ways to alleviate that problem. Jipsa's primary role is to identify the clusters of skills that are critical, identify sets of necessary interventions, highlight bottlenecks and recommend solutions.

So far it's managed to identify several skills clusters as urgent or critical. Those are high level, world-class managerial, planning and engineering skills; town, city and regional planning skills; artisan and technician skills; management and planning skills for public health and education; and mathematics, science, ICT and language competence teaching in public schools.

What many countries have done and continue to do is import the necessary skills they lack by making a list of the qualifications and skills they need most urgently and proceed to grant access to people who have those skills.

Britain does it with South African doctors, nurses and teachers. Canada does it with most healthcare professionals and engineers. Shouldn't SA be doing the same? Shouldn't we be doing all we can to ensure that we attract the right skills sets and ensure the transfer of those skills to our own citizens?

Adding insult to injury

It seems silly that we don't have such a policy. And if we did, there's definitely no evidence of it at home affairs. I have a friend from Uganda who was educated in SA and who has every qualification you can imagine in IT and engineering.

To add insult to injury, IBM SA is champing at the bit to keep him, but the government refuses to give him a work permit. And I can't tell you the countless times I've heard similar stories from other friends and colleagues.

The interesting part of the state's blanket refusal to grant permits of late is that it's completely non-discriminatory: white Europeans wanting to work in SA are having just as much trouble getting permits as Africans living on the continent, which breaks the prevailing stereotype that only Africans are illegal aliens in SA.

Nevertheless, the attitude at home affairs is in direct conflict with the proposed economic development policies of the current government. Clearly, there's a problem here.

My guess is that SA's various ministries and departments aren't communicating with one another - a common problem that repeatedly rears its ugly head in SA's political landscape.

Some departments are notorious for working in isolation without consulting other departments, doubling resources and starting initiatives aimed at the same problem or working in direct conflict with another department.

Don't have a snowball's hope in hell

The department of trade & industry, the department of finance and the department of labour have made a list of skills we desperately need in SA and have publicised them, but I suspect they failed to call the bureaucrats over at home affairs to tell them about it.

How else can you explain the constant rejection of highly skilled individuals who want to work in our country?

We can't hope to create people with the necessary skills overnight and we can't continue complaining about the problem. We need to do something about the problem right now - and do it quickly, as every moment we hesitate is costing millions of rand in GDP.

The most reasonable interim solution is importing skills. That doesn't mean we'll be taking jobs away from South Africans. In fact, if anything we'll be doing quite the opposite.

With the necessary skills, we'll grow the economy and create more jobs for South Africans. Our biggest challenge once we import the necessary skills is to ensure we support skills transfer between foreign nationals and South Africans so that we don't have to keep hunting for skills in the global market anymore.

But as things stand, we don't have a snowball's hope in hell of reaching our 6% growth target if we don't have the human capital required to achieve that.

Information supplied by www.fin24.co.za