Following President Thabo Mbeki's State of the Nation speech on Friday, government officials say new immigration laws will be in place by the end of the year to attract new skills, especially in IT.
This is according to a SAPA report, which quoted deputy home affairs official Charles Nqakula as saying that the laws will receive urgent attention and review.
Skills developers and employment agencies have been urgently petitioning the government to review existing immigration laws which hamper foreigners wishing to work in SA.
SAPA quotes minister Essop Pahad as saying government believes there are a number of foreign workers with the necessary skills to fill the gap, most notably from India, which will be used as a recruiting ground for IT staff, and Russia for the scientific industries.
No clear statistics are available to show just how many IT workers SA has lost to foreign countries.
"We can rest assured, the movement of our skilled IT staff from this country is prolific," says recruitment specialist Bryan Hattingh.
"The amount of people who give up their citizenship when they leave the country are the minority; there is still a huge amount of workers leaving for contractual work for two to three years, and there is no way to keep track of them."
SAPA reports that the ministers remained mum when asked how the government planned to stem the brain drain, which is exacerbating the skills shortage.
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