The social costs involved in losing skilled immigrants has led to complaints about the ineptitude of home Affairs officials, reports Marion Edmunds
Department of trade and industry officials revealed this week they had to intervene to ensure skilled foreigners are not prevented access to the South African job market by inept members of the Department of Home Affairs.
Trade and Industry representative Ismael Lagardien said his department had been concerned Home Affairs officials were not sophisticated enough to evaluate the CVs of skilled foreigners, and that valuable applications for work permits were being turned down, to South Africa’s detriment.
“When we met business delegations, especially from Germany, who were prepared to invest here with highly developed technology, it was a consistent complaint that Home Affairs was preventing specialists —who knew the technology and the machines — from working in the country and from training South Africans,” he said.
This has been backed up by the chief executive officer of the German Chamber of Commerce in Johannesburg, Klaus Schuurman, who said that his organisation had received a number of complaints last year about Home Affairs.
“We had a case where a German company wanted to bring in a specialist to make diamond- tipped tools. Home Affairs refused permission for his work visa on the grounds that there were enough diamond specialists in South Africa. Once the application was turned down, we had to reapply and only after explaining that the applicant was a specialist tool-maker and not a diamond specialist, did he get the work permit,” he said.
This system of application could be expensive in future, given that the government wishes to introduce tariffs for work permit applications — R350 a time.
Schuurman is one of many in the business community who has to cope with the inefficiencies of home Affairs officials. chief executive of the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce Marius de Jager said the problem was being discussed within his community, and he believed there was a great deal of sensitivity in government about who should be allowed in and who should be kept out.
“I am not sure whether our new government has clear cut policies on this, but there is a sense that we should be training our own people rather than bringing in people from outside. I have sympathy with that view to a degree, but South Africa is suffering from a brain drain and we cannot afford to be too selective in our immigration policy.”
De Jager said South Africa had lost a valuable opportunity to pick up skilled workers from Hong Kong and Eastern Europe, and South Africa even needed artisans from abroad such as electricians who were essential for the Reconstruction and Development Programme.
Tim Sargeant, a manager of CPL, a specialist computer firm recruitment and contract company, has also been tearing out his hair at the short-sighted approach of the home Affairs officials.
“We do not believe that they understand the subtleties of the computer industry. Work permits are still being refused on the grounds that there are unemployed computer people in South Africa, and certainly there is no need to import people with six months experience. But somebody who has a university degree and three or four years experience can get a job here tomorrow — I know of a thousand computer jobs I could fill today.”
Sargeant said the lack of skilled people in the computer industry was starting to impact on training programmes, as there were not enough people around to train-up South Africans to do the jobs.
Sargeant said that in the 80s a work permit could be issued in a matter of days, but now the process of application could take months.
Lagardien said that South Africa needed more engineers and technicians and manufacturers.
“The people taking jobs away from South African masses are the illegal immigrants from Africa who are pouring over the border and who can only do menial tasks and hard labour. We need people who can build our manufacturing industry and who are specialists in technology. We have too many theology and sociology graduates.”
Lagardien and others from the Department of Trade and Industry indicated that government was working on ways of introducing a larger technical component into the education system, in order to produce South African graduates with the right skills to grow the economy. In the meantime, those skills would have to be imported.
A Trade and Industry representative said the department would only intervene in the case of companies, and would not support a work permit application by an individual.
By the time of going to press, the Department of Home Affairs had not responded to questions put to it by the Mail & Guardian.