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BL Premium reports that Massmart chair Kuseni Dlamini writes in the company’s annual report that SA needs to make it easier for skilled individuals from abroad to work in the country and for tourists to apply for visas.
“If SA is to grow and prosper and our companies are to be globally competitive, we need access to scarce talent. We need to make the process of people applying to work in SA ‘more user friendly’,” Dlamini opined. Massmart is controlled by Wal-Mart, which has drafted in three executives, including CEO Mitchell Slape, from its operations elsewhere in the world to revive the fortunes of its local unit. Dlamini said in the report released on Tuesday: “We are located some distance from the centres of global economic activity, and we therefore need to make every effort to make it easy for people to visit our country.” The critical skills list, which was updated early in 2022 by the department of home affairs, details which professions or areas require foreign skills as SA cannot provide enough graduates. But it can still be onerous to apply for critical skills visas. Companies must show that they cannot hire South Africans to do the same job as SA battles with the highest percentage of unemployed adults in the world. Dlamini also spoke about improving tourism, a large driver of GDP growth and employment. He said SA could unlock “the full potential of our tourism market by making it easier for tourists to access visas”. The tourism industry has long complained that promises by the government to introduce an e-visa, making it much easier to get a holiday visa to SA, have come to nothing.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Katharine Child at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)
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