The executive director of the International Society for Professional Engineers (ISPE), Michael Hosking, has written an open letter to President Thabo Mbeki, requesting the removal of the Affirmative Action Bill and employment equity requirements within the engineering profession.
Much of the society`s membership is made up of IT professionals and software engineers who form the backbone of many of the country`s industry sectors, says Hosking.
In the letter, he states that he writes on behalf of the engineering profession in general, and the ISPE, Union International des Ingenieurs Professionnels and the Society for Black Engineers in particular, representing the engineering profession in SA and around the world.
"While we agree that the discriminatory measures of the past by the nationalist government have to be corrected, the ANC government must not practise a system of discriminating against one of the race groups, thereby repeating the past and following a policy which you fought to eliminate," the letter says.
The letter argues that the requirements of the Affirmative Action Bill and the various empowerment equity bills are "destroying the future growth of SA and are leading to the complete destruction of the infrastructure of this country" by affecting the growth of manufacturing and slowing the rate of investment.
It adds that the Bill is preventing and limiting the employment of professional black engineers from surrounding SADC countries and many skilled professionals are being denied opportunities at various levels of government.
"The Bill has already destroyed the structure of most of the local authorities in SA, in that 74 of the local councils do not employ any qualified technical specialists. In your own recent government survey, only 8% of people in key jobs at local authority level of government had the required skills to perform their jobs," the letter states.
As an example, the letter cites continued electricity outages in Johannesburg, which it says needs to be addressed by a team of professional engineers "very urgently before the hub of SA is destroyed".
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