S. Africa wants skilled workers to immigrate

Claire Nullis

CAPE TOWN, South Africa — Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said Monday that a shortage of engineering, management, finance, information technology and other key skills was hurting government efforts to boost infrastructure and investment.

The lack of skilled manpower is so crippling that Mlambo-Ngcuka said at a press briefing that the government was considering drafting retirees back into the work force, luring South Africans emigrants home and drawing in new immigrants — even though unemployment is at least 27 percent.

She said it was vital to tackle the skills shortage to achieve the national goal of halving unemployment and poverty by 2014, which depends on the economy growing by 4.5 percent until 2009 and 6 percent between 2010 and 2014.

Mlambo-Ngcuka is head of a task force on accelerating economic growth — which last year topped 5 percent — and ensuring that its benefits reach poor black communities which have seen little improvement since the end of apartheid 12 years ago.

“Our recent growth, although welcome, has been unbalanced and based on strong commodity prices, strong capital inflows and strong domestic consumer demand which has increased imports and strengthened the currency way beyond desirable levels,” Mlambo-Ngcuka told reporters.

“Yet levels of unemployment remain too high and growth has not been adequately shared.”

Official unemployment is nearly 27 percent, but this does not include people who have stopped looking for jobs in disillusionment.

The acute shortage of skilled workers has forced a rethinking of education, training and labor policies.

The shortage of engineers, for instance, is hampering infrastructure projects for roads and housing. In the classroom, many children are being taught by unqualified math and science teachers.

Many of the country’s labor woes are the result of apartheid, which denied nonwhites decent schools and training. The multiracial democratic government has struggled to overcome the historic imbalances.

“We have a massive loss of human resources in South Africa because the post-school opportunities are so narrow and focussed on further education,” said Education Minister Naledi Pandor. “We should be using every training opportunity possible,” she said in one of a series of ministerial press briefings marking the start of the new parliamentary year.

Labor Minister Membathisi Mdladlana urged businesses to invest more in training, which has been in constant decline since 1986, when the former white government was in power.

“Stop your fears,” he said. “Take on apprentices because legally and morally it is the right thing to do.”

Mlambo-Ngcuka said the government would focus on youth development and ensure that more women had access to training and loans. It would simplify regulations to make it easier to establish small firms and use labor intensive methods in road maintenance and building and other infrastructure projects, she said.

She said tourism had the potential to increase its contribution to gross domestic product to 12 percent, up from 8 percent, boosting employment by an extra 400,000 by 2014.

Business process outsourcing — whereby large companies turn over back-office functions like credit card processing or call centers to countries with lower labor costs — had attracted 5,000 jobs from other countries, Mlambo-Ngcuka said, and had the potential for 100,000 additional jobs in the next three years.

(Associated Press)