The South African public service has identified 20 958 employees, including members of the South African National Defence Force, who are in excess of the skills requirements and a special programme to focus on reskilling will run until May 31 next year.
At this time the focus of jobs cuts will fall on the lower levels of the service — earning below R50 000 a year.
Parallel to job cuts, however, will be a programme to attract, through incentives, skilled workers particularly in the health sector with a focus on the KwaZulu-Natal province.
Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said at a media briefing on Thursday: “The special programme will focus on reskilling employees and will also facilitate the absorption into future departmental vacancies.”
But she added that “employees who are not successful in this programme will be eligible for the employer-initiated severance packages”.
Fraser-Moleketi noted that there were, nevertheless, 20 313 vacancies nationally but 5 279 of these were non-funded vacancies and 15 034 were funded vacancies. This effectively means that the public service does not have the budget to pay for some of these vacancies.
Of the vacancies 51% or 7 733 were in KwaZulu-Natal, with the next largest component being in national departments at 24% or 3 624.
Fraser-Moleketi said because of the loss of health workers, a scarce skills project “is engaging with National Treasury to look at the recruitment and retention of personnel in that sector”. Outgoing Director General Robinson Ramaite said the department was looking at various options, including incentives, to attract staff.
The minister said the number of excess employees had already been reduced from 28 744. This number had been cut through internal appointments, voluntary packages (2 507), 746 had resigned, 2 311 had received employment in other
departments and 23 had taken early retirement. A further 2 199 had been “absorbed into structures”. — I-Net Bridge