JOHANNESBURG (dpa) – South Africa is to ease its immigration laws in an attempt to lure skilled foreigners, against the backdrop of a skilled labour shortage and an exodus of professionals.
Countries like India and Russia have already been identified as fertile grounds for specialists in the fields of information technology and the sciences.Government officials also believe other parts of Africa could yield qualified immigrants who would be willing to work in South Africa.High emigration figures have dogged South Africa in recent years and contribute significantly to the country’s skills shortage.South Africa is estimated to have lost between 1.1 million and 1.6 million skilled workers, managerial and other professionals over the last six years, according to Business Day newspaper.Immigration figures – excluding millions of illegal immigrants – remain fairly low. Migration experts attribute this imbalance to the prohibitive Aliens Control Act.Whites no longer dominate the emigrant ranks which include blacks, coloureds and Indians. They say they are motivated to leave by the country’s high crime, costly healthcare and devaluation of the currency.South Africa has lost business, medical, engineering and teaching professionals and information technology specialists to countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Britain.Education Minister Kader Asmal criticised what he called “raids on the teaching profession” by a visiting team of British consultants and principals.Such raids, he said, came at a critical time in South Africa’s history and were not helpful for the development of education in the country.But teaching, along with nursing, ranks high among the poorly-paid professions in South Africa.The average monthly salary for a primary school teacher with a three-year diploma and a class of about 45 pupils is around 3,400 rand (450 U.S. dollars).Locally trained nurses – who earn as little, sometimes even less – are meanwhile also being poached at an alarming rate, according to a report in the daily Star newspaper.Each month some 350 nurses apply to leave the country to take up posts in Britain, Australia and Saudi Arabia.“There is no money in nursing in this country. Nurses can’t be blamed for leaving,” Beverley Sheer of the private Nurses Services of South Africa agency told the newspaper.Canada seems to be a popular destination among South Africa’s medical professionals. It has been reported that in the one in five doctors working in Canada’s Saskatchewan province earned their first medical degree in South Africa.This has prompted William Makgoba, the head of the country’s Medical Research Council, to suggest that Canada compensate South Africa for “looting” doctors.To fill the void left by doctors, health authorities resorted to the import of hundreds of Cuban doctors and instituted a two-year compulsory community service programme for local medical graduates.The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants reports that 4,153 of its 19,099 members were living abroad at the end of last year.But not only professionals are in short supply. The labour market also lacks trained workers in the trades, information technology, manufacturing and maintenance fields.This was a consideration during the formulation of a new skills development strategy destined for implementation this year.The labour ministry hopes the strategy, aimed at encouraging firms to train workers and in doing so boost the country’s skills base, will do just that.It also believes new flexible immigration laws will eliminate the “unsystematic and haphazard” methods of dealing with applications for work permits from skilled workers and potential investors.President Thabo Mbeki has sanctioned the establishment of a special desk to deal with the immigration of skilled people more efficiently.
