Who is responsible for developing skills in South Africa? Big business or government?
With the new Immigration Amendment Act that comes into operation at the end of this year, the issue of skills development and importing skilled people from foreign countries will be highlighted again.
Once the Act is passed business people from all over the world can work in South Africa for double the time that they could previously.
The Act is waiting for approval by the Immigration Advisory Board and it will then appear, with a proclamation by President Thabo Mbeki, in the Government Gazette.
The policy decision by Minister of Home Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula to amend the terms that business people can work in South Africa from two years to four years came after big business complained that the two-year period was too restrictive.
Multinational companies could get intra-company work transfer permits for employees to work in South Africa for two years. This had been increased to four years, while the Bill previously recommended five years.
An impassioned plea by the technical working group of the joint initiative on priority skills acquisition (Jipsa) for obstacles in the importation of skills to be eased was made last year to government.
Big companies complained that the immigration process did not enable them to have their top employees working in the South African operations. This needed to be changed, Jipsa argued, because the skills shortage in South Africa was hampering crucial infrastructure development.
There were not enough people in South Africa to fill the vacancies existing at high-end companies. The quickest way to deal with a skills shortage of this magnitude was to allow international skilled business people in South Africa to stay for longer to ensure that effective skills transfer take place, the chair of the working group and now SACP chairman, Gwede Mantashe, said.
During the parliamentary process Cosatu fiercely opposed the increased time limit for foreign workers because, it said, importing foreign workers would curb skills development on a local level.
Prakashnee Govender, Cosatu’s parliamentary liaison person, said the trade union felt that an extensive overhaul of the existing immigration policy was necessary to deal with these and other problems affecting migrant workers.
“For us the amendment Bill should have been a temporary arrangement to get the work done, but local skills development should be a priority. This Bill will disincentivise local skills development.”
At issue was with whom the responsibility for the development of local skills lay. Should multinationals prioritise skills development within their ranks or should government create conditions to force them to?
“The South African government has not even ratified any international migrant labour conventions yet. Such ratification will go a long way in ensuring that the problems around migrant labour [are solved].” She said there needed to be a concrete move to transfer skills, either on a formal or informal level.
Informally, skills transfer takes place when employees are given tasks to which they have not been assigned before. This, said Govender, should be backed up by formal training that is relevant to the work that the employee is doing or could do in future.
“There must be a conscious decision by companies to upgrade skills by exposing employees to work.”
Too often the vocational training that employees received did not relate directly to their jobs and therefore does not empower them to improve their daily tasks.
This process should go hand in hand with the importing of skills from other countries.
She also drew a distinction between how skills obtained from the countries of the North were being dealt with in relation to skills gained from countries within Africa.
“Companies are happy to get white skills, but there is discrimination against people from the [African] continent.”
Big companies often complained about graduates who were not able to do the work expected of them and therefore companies used the high premium on skills rather than qualifications as a reason for wanting to import skilled people.
Deon Erasmus, acting chief of legal services with the department, said the responsibility lay with relevant companies to see whether and how skills were transferred.
“The Act is hoping to attract more skilled people to come and work in South Africa. They can come into the country, get the companies up and running and then leave, hopefully transferring skills along the way.”