While it is laudable that the newly formed Immigration Advisory Board (IAB) is investigating ways of getting more skilled emigrants to either return to SA or network more widely with companies here to share their expertise, they are overlooking the fact that the government`s policy is to promote affirmative action - and many of these skilled workers, now residing overseas, do not fit into the correct category, commented Org Geldenhuys, a director of Pretoria-based recruitment agency, Abacus Recruitment.
"It is really encouraging that the government is addressing the skills shortage and that the IAB is looking at ways to attract much-needed skills. But what I find puzzling, and perhaps this is something that needs to be considered, is that many of these offshore skills are going to be of a decidedly cosmopolitan nature.
"A percentage of the potential recruits will fit the current government profile of uplifting formerly disadvantaged individuals and communities - which is also laudable - but the whole issue, as I see it, is rather more complicated than that. Does this mean the government is starting to change its mindset regarding its affirmative action policies, which are now part and parcel of our employment society?" asked Geldenhuys.
The IAB was established in May by home affairs minister, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, in a move to address the "brain circulation", or brain drain, issue. One of the initiatives stemming from this has been the SA Network of Skills Abroad (Sansa). Started at the University of Cape Town in 1998 - and last year shifted to the National Research Foundation as an independent programme - Sansa aims to track the emigration of skilled professionals in a wide range of fields and put them into contact with local bodies, firms and institutions that desperately need people.
But, as Abacus` Geldenhuys points out, "a significant proportion" of these people are not going to fit into the government`s stated goal of uplifting previously disadvantaged individuals and communities. "It is a tricky situation, it would appear," he said. "On the one hand the brain drain is being recognised, and on the other, attempts to attract skills are maybe going to be at odds with current empowerment programmes - because the skills pool they are trying to dip their toes into is going to be very mixed."
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