An ambitious plan by the department of labour to create a massive database of all job vacancies in South Africa is being backed by official small business bodies, which raises serious questions about the state of small-business advocacy in the country.
For several weeks, no media picked up on the strange plan after Minister of Labour Membathisi Mdladlana announced it in his budget vote speech in Parliament: “I will soon sign into law regulations in terms of the Skills Development Act that will make it compulsory for all employers to register all placement opportunities, including vacancies, with my department.”
An official from the department of labour confirmed that the database is in an advanced stage of development and that the idea is for the department “to match supply and demand” – to act as a kind of super placement agency.
The regulations, issued in terms of the Skills Development Act, are expected to be published for comment soon.
Business chamber officials and economists have meanwhile warned that the plan will add further red tape to an already overburdened small-business community, and called for small businesses to be exempted.
But surprisingly, the two organisations most focused on the protection of small-business interest came out in support of the department’s scheme. Lionel October, who oversees small business development at the department of trade and industry, reportedly told the small business publication Gauteng Business that, as long as small businesses have sufficient contracts and finance, they can handle red tape.
Thami Mazwai, spokesperson of the ministerial advisory council on small business, after speaking to the department of labour’s director general about the plan, said the scheme would be good for small-business owners, who not only have rights, but obligations too.
The department’s plan seems to stem from the vast numbers of unemployed who had given in their names at the country’s network of labour centres. With the department’s previous attempt at matching supply and demand of skills through the vast bureaucracy of the sector education and training authorities (Setas) in tatters, it hopes to get information about skills shortages in the economy directly from employers, and no longer through the dysfunctional Setas.
Employers will be expected to fax or email the details of vacancies to the department of labour, including job descriptions and the skills levels required. Proponents of the plan argue that employers have to register workers for UIF and workman’s compensation, and that the new process just forms part of the paperwork that has to be done anyway.
But the extension of government paperwork to the recruitment process goes against repeated promises to cut red tape for small businesses. And the benefits of such a system are highly questionable for small-business owners, who tend to appoint people they know, or through trusted recruitment agencies that do most of the sifting for them.
If the implementation of the regulations go unchallenged, the system could turn into a bureaucratic white elephant, similar to the information manual that every business was supposed to produce in terms of the Promotion of Access to Information Act.
Without the support of the trade and industry department or the small business advisory council on the issue, small businesses will once again have to rely on the business chambers, which is big-business driven, to stand up for them.