Delays in getting scarce skills into the country are costing the technology sector, and dampening opportunities for companies to transfer skills to local employees.
Organisations in the sector, which have no choice but to bring in skills from India, as they are not available locally, argue the permit process takes far too long, leading to unpredictability in planning and an additional cost burden.
In addition, intra-company transfers are now set to take as long as 60 days, which will exacerbate the situation. In March 2006, SA sought to resolve the skills dearth and, as part of its plan, moved to speed up the visa process, after 35 000 positions across 53 different categories were identified as being scarce and opened up to formally-qualified foreigners with five years' experience.
However, as the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) drew to an end, the final report, published in March 2010, found SA's skills challenge remains as critical as it was at the time of its formation, in March 2006.
More to do
Kiran Acharya, VP of IB Technology, a joint venture between DVT and IB Technology India, says it takes more than two months to get an application process through home affairs and at least one month to fulfil other needs, taking the time frame to three months. He adds the situation has reached this point after worsening from November.
The Immigration Act of 2002 allows the minister of home affairs to consult with the ministers of labour and trade and industry to identify areas of scarce, critical and special skills. A list is then meant to be made available, although the last list seems to have been published several years ago.
The Jipsa report found that streamlining the permit process and building awareness among Department of Home Affairs officials about the rationale for importing scarce skills took longer than anticipated and the importation of skills faced bottlenecks. It said an operating manual had been developed, but more needed to be done.
Spill-over
The process has a negative effect, as clients are wary of awarding business on a three-month timeframe, says Acharya. "It is difficult for us to forecast resource requirements three to four months in advance and it creates a lot of risk. Sometime projects get delayed and even cancelled."
Gerald Naidoo, CEO of Logikal Consulting, says although the company has a corporate work permit, it has experienced delays and lost projects as a result. He says corporate permit-holders should have visas processed in seven to 10 days, but the reality is that it takes much longer.
Naidoo says part of the problem seems to be that the department is still using a manual tracking system, and this leads to problems with being able to plan, as the company cannot forecast when the skills it needs will be in SA. Logikal brings in skills that it cannot source locally, such as high-end application development and enterprise resource planning (ERP).
The delays also lead to the firm double paying, as it has hired the person who ends up sitting in its Indian office "doing nothing", says Naidoo. He says there is no revenue stream to offset this, and the company sometimes has to outsource the work while it waits.
Logikal has had no choice but to change the way it does business in order to deliver on its commitments, says Naidoo.
Added pressure
Mahindra Satyam business head for SA and Africa, Jena Chittaranjan, says it usually takes three to four weeks to bring in a skill, but the organisation has now been told that an intra-company transfer visa will take at least 60 days.
Chittaranjan says the turnaround time delays project timelines and impacts negatively on skills transfer, as Mahindra Satyam usually loads the project with local junior resources or learners and, if the project start up timelines gets delayed, the skill transfer programme also gets delayed.
Mahindra Satyam says the skills it finds in short supply include business intelligence, analytics, data scientists, high-end ERP and specialised testing.
Home affairs indicated it would respond to the industry's concerns, but failed to do so by the prescribed time.
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