Country fails to attract highly skilled foreigners
August 18 2011 at 09:00am
ANDISIWE MAKINANA
SOUTH Africa’s efforts to attract highly skilled foreign workers are floundering, with just 5 percent of the target being met.
Yesterday, the Department of Trade and Industry (dti) revealed in a presentation to Parliament that the Home Affairs Department had issued just 2 497 quota work permits between January 2010 and July this year, far behind the target of attracting 50 000 such workers each year. Quota work permits are issued to migrants with scarce and critical skills.
The dti was briefing a joint meeting of Parliament’s oversight committees on labour and home affairs, a day after the Home Affairs and Labour departments did the same.
The dti’s Pumla Ncapayi said the Department of Home Affairs determined a specific quota for work permits, and the number of quota permits issued for 2010/11 was 2 497, while 11 492 general work permits, 1 193 exceptional skills permits and 3 590 intra-company transfer permits had been issued.
The Department of Home Affairs’s strategic plan states that the objective is to move towards a “positive influx of scarce skills of around 50 000 migrants annually”.
DA MP Annette Lovemore said: “The numbers that have been given to us are very far from the target of 50 000.”
The dti’s Wilna Barnard quipped: “Maybe you can draw from that that we are maybe not such a destination of choice for highly skilled people.”
Barnard said her department, with Labour and Home Affairs, was working on how it could be made easy for skilled people to come to this country.
“If you look at the quota work permit, the uptake is very poor. If we really want to get to the 50 000 highly skilled people, we will have to look at that and make a plan on how we are going to do that.”
The Labour Department’s Sam Morotoba said data on the number of migrant workers in the country was unreliable.
http://www.iol.co.za/the-star/country-fails-to-attract-highly-skilled-foreigners-1.1120094
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