Don't get me wrong, the concept of affirmative action and the whole implementation of BEE is not a bad thing, in fact in my opinion, it's a very good thing. The problem comes in when the whole process is that it was not throught through properly. The result of that is that companies tried to short cut the whole issue and had their gardeners on their books as their Chairman and also huge retrenchments taking place with the majority of those leaving being the pale male in their forties and fifties.
This coupled with the fact that we are not training enough skills (mostly due to the anticipation of the above) has resulted in a skills shortage. Now, instead of enticing the 'pale males' that we threw out with the bath water, we now are trying to import the skills from the rest of the world. Ironically, the rest of the world is also facing a skills shortage - for whatever reason - and our newly qualfied, at the taxpayers expense, skills are also being enticed out of the country - it has become a 'catch 22' situation!
So now what!
Well, I for one will be watching to see what great hairbrained idea, our Government will come up with next!
Tossing the grey shoes
Matuma Letsoalo
31 March 2007 11:59
Grey-shoe and red-tape salary structures in the public service are set to be dropped as government battles to fill vacancies. Gone are the days of rigid career progression and set-in-stone pay scales, says Lewis Rabkin, spokesperson for Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. Skills shortages in the state impact fundamentally on economic growth because infrastructure spending and development are critical factors in enhancing growth and wellbeing.Rabkin says about 21% of state jobs are vacant and most of these are in critical areas such as engineering. The accelerated and shared growth initiative of South Africa’s (Asgisa) annual report, released last week, revealed that half the professional engineering posts in the public service were vacant. Of those filled, many were occupied by under-qualified technicians. The report shows that, of the 231 local municipalities in the country, 79 have no civil or transport engineers, technologists or technicians; 42 have only one civil or transport engineer, technologist or technician and 42 have only one civil or transport technician.
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