Question NW3979 to the Minister of Employment and Labour

Reply:

(a) The Republic of South Africa, like all other countries throughout the world does experience scarce and critical skills in those job types for where employers cannot find suitably qualified or experienced employees. One of the alternatives of deploying these skills in the labour market is to source them from foreign nationals. To ensure the orderly and transparent manner to address this problem and to prevent the abuse of this “shortage” or displacement of citizens from employment, government has introduced different mechanism that are consistent with other practices in other countries.

The Government, led by the Department of Home Affairs publishes a scarce skills list that foreigners can accommodated in or provided with corporate or individual work visa if they find employment locally and an employer can provide evidence that they could not find an equally suitably qualified and or experienced South African in the applicable category.

The Department of Higher Education and Training leads in the research process to publish and receive public comments on the National Scarce Skills List. The National Development Plan, the National Infrastructure Plan, Industrial Policy Action Plan and the Sector Education and Training Authorities (SETAs) Scarce Skills Lists, which indicates shortages in certain career fields, are used to determine the skills that are needed.

(b) According to research, economic sectors within South Africa that are affected the most by skills shortages are those sectors that South Africa benefits most from skilled migrants and include:-

• Information Technology
• Business and Management
• Design
• Engineering
• Financial Sectors
• Marketing
• Medical and Health
• Arts and Media

The Department of Employment and Labour, assist with the negotiations and approval of such a list at NEDLAC. We also provide recommendations to Home Affairs with regards to availability of such skills in the country as we process Corporate and Individual Work Visas on behalf of the employers.

We have also developed a National Labour Migration Policy and the Employment Services Amendment Bill to amongst others, regulate the manner in which foreign nationals can be employed in the South African labour market, transfer of skills to locals, setting of quotas in those low and mediums skills levels where we may employ foreign nationals because of various circumstances, the employment of South Africans abroad and the types of Bilateral Agreements that will have to be concluded in these regard.