South Africa’s Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana said on Thursday at the 19th Annual Labour Law Conference in Sandton that the recent importing of skills by Sasol indicated that it was not just job creation that was a fundamental problem in South Africa, but also a shortage of skills.
Responding to a question concerning Sasol’s plans to bring in thousands of artisans from outside of South Africa, Mdladlana asked the audience to tell him where the skills actually were.
He said he was approached by Sasol to fill this urgent need and had no information that the country could fill these gaps (apparently a large portion of the skills are for welders with at least a level-four qualification and South Africa has many welders, but only at level two, which was far from sufficient for the job at hand).
“Job creation is one of our fundamental problems in South Africa — but so is the skills shortage,” he said.
“Remember we have 30% to 40% of our population with no education, who cannot read or write,” he said.
“We should be using radio stations like 702 to request people with skills to come forward,” he said.
He also commented on a positive approach by the Freedom Front Plus, where they develop CVs of people who actually did have the skills to do so and attempted to make these available.
“It’s not only Sasol that is recruiting from elsewhere; there are many more companies.”
“Some companies actually fought with the Minister of Home Affairs to ease the law, so should we say ‘No’? We agree there is a problem with skills and this must be addressed through the education channels,” said Mdladlana.
Security industry investigation
Meanwhile, Mdladlana also confirmed that the security industry will be investigated in the wake of the recent debilitating strike action.
“We will look at benefits and conditions in various sectors in the future. For example, we will investigate the security industry now that the strike is over.
“There are serious challenges in the security industry — it’s a case of dog eat dog,” he said.
Mdladlana also said during his speech that he will continue to look into the conditions of all vulnerable workers and said much time, for example, is being spent on the problems of farm workers.
He said that in the informal sectors of the economy “someone was not making informal money”. — I-Net Bridge