Today's Labour News

BL Premium at SA plans to launch an “aggressive” recruitment campaign targeting skilled foreign professionals, inclusive of potential subsidies for immigration costs, in the hope of reversing the brain drain and reviving key sectors.

Another element in the Department of Employment & Labour’s (DEL’s) plan to grow SA’s skills base is a charm offensive to lure back experienced expats, who have sought greener pastures elsewhere. The plan, published in the country’s first national labour migration policy, proposes aggressive recruitment among the diaspora and foreign professionals in critically affected sectors and professions, with complementing standard work visa applications.   The DEL, in co-ordination with the department of international relations & co-operation, and in consultation and collaboration with employers’ organisations, will explore several measures to attract skilled foreign nationals. These would include job adverts relayed by embassies, facilitation of job fairs abroad, subsidisation of immigration costs and the fast-tracking of immigration procedures. But, the government’s proposals are likely to be hotly debated. Its cheerleaders are likely to argue that courting skilled foreign professionals and coaxing seasoned expatriates back home with subsidised immigration costs will plug talent gaps in an economy that has hardly grown in more than a decade. Critics might caution that this approach could further sideline local workers amid an unemployment rate of nearly 33%, raising thorny legal and constitutional questions about fairness.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Kabelo Khumalo at BusinessLive (subscriber access only)

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