Dear Editor,
The time has come again for us to vote for people to lead the country for the next five years. Politicians are rallying through the country to make promises to the voters promising to relieve unemployment and poverty.
The one system that will surely remain is affirmative action and BBBEE but is the system sustainable? South Africa wants to be competitive internationally with regards to quality of products and services thus the majority of local companies are allocated their ISO 9001 standard accreditation to conform to the international standard of their product and their services.
However one of the standards of ISO 9001 is: "Clause 6.2.2 Competence, awareness and training". As a quality auditor I have found huge discrepancies in this area as many workers are found not to be competent.
This is not to be blamed on the individual. They were appointed to ensure compliance to the AA policy. The result is that poor quality work is delivered at the cost of the company with the result being a lower quality product. The "proudly South African" initiative had me excited in the beginning, but it is a total oxymoron now.
Why there is still affirmative action in our country when we already have a skills shortage? In SA Africans make up the majority of the population at just over 38 million, or 79.6%. The white population is estimated at 4.3 million (9.1%), the colored population at 4.2 million (8.9%) and the Indian/Asian population at just short of 1.2 million (2.5%). According to the mid-2007 estimates from Statistics South Africa, the country's population stands at some 47.9 million
Unemployment is currently at 26%, which means 12.454m people are still unemployed in South Africa. Fifteen percent of white South Africans are without work or income, totaling 0.65 million. The white population does not even make a dent in the employment. And how many emigrate every year?
Unfortunately whites have been unfairly advantage in the past and are the more skilled people, but to live up to international standards, these are the people you need. This is a minority of people that can provide skills, knowledge and expertise to train our fellow countrymen, seeing that the government does not provide it.
The ANC recently promised five million jobs to the selected unemployed and poor voters, but five million to offset the 12.454million unemployed won't make a difference seeing that there is a growth of population of 2.9 million over the same period that they plan to create the jobs.
The reality is that there are already approximately 1 million vacancies in SA of which most are in the Government departments. There are over 45 000 vacancies advertised in the job mail alone. If the unemployed can not even fill these positions how are they going to fill the newly created jobs?
The political party that brings a policy that will answer these questions and abolish AA and BEE will court foreign investors and clients will be attracted to quality products and services that SA will have on offer. To educate, train and equip people with the necessary skills so that they are competent, trained and aware in their jobs is the answer.
Once we have mastered this, then the government can create more jobs.
Werner van der Merwe
- News24
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