SA Unemployment Issues: This Is How The Guptas ‘Steal’ Jobs From South Africans

Source: Buzz South Africa, 23/10/2017

Latest report has shown that the Gupta family’s influence on the South
African Home Affairs Department may have caused the increasing loss of
jobs in the country.

The report says there were many qualified South Africans out of
employment who could have done this work had the Gupta family not
captured the Home Affairs Department.

The family and its businesses reportedly used top government officials
to waive important requirements for work visas for at least 50 foreign
nationals and family members, who were brought into South Africa to
fill “critical” jobs such as project managers, chefs and chartered
accountants.

This, the report says, turned the DHA into a family-own private
permit-issuing factory and it was most effective during the time of
Minister Malusi Gigaba who is now SA’s Minister of finance.

The project also involved a network of senior and middle-level
department officials

SA unemployment rate is said to have risen by 1.2 of a percentage
point to 27.7% in the first quarter of 2017 increased by 1.2 â€" the
highest figure since September 2003.

In the fourth quarter of 2016, SA unemployment stood at 26.5%.
Statistics SA also reported that there would be more bad news for
job-seekers as the formal non-agricultural sector of the economy
reported a decline of 34 000 jobs for the quarter ended June 2017.

This is according to the latest Quarterly Employment Statistics (QES)
report released by Statistics South Africa. The Zuma-led government
laid the blame on an unequal distribution of wealth among citizens,
hence the introduction of the Radical Economic Transformation in the
early years of 2017. Others, however, blamed the government for doing
little or nothing to combat the incessant flow of illegal immigrants
into the country.

The evidence of the wholesale capture of the DHA is contained in the
trove of Gupta e-mails which shows that despite the massive all effort
to combat the effect of unemployment on the economy, dozens of
curriculum vitae showing highly skilled people looking for jobs still
exist.

Then there is the “creative brand manager” eventually employed as a
creative director, who appeared to have entered SA in 2008. “It will
be a huge loss to the company if we send him back and look out for new
candidates since he has been instrumental in the launch of our new TV
station and is leading a team of 30 interns (South Africans) and
imparting skill sets needed to develop a new breed of TV professionals
in the country,” reads the application for a waiver. This has raised
the question that if he has been here since 2008, where is the list of
people he is supposed to have trained, as required by the Immigration
Act.

The rules for bringing foreign workers into SA is that they must
school South Africans in their job. This means that a skills transfer
plan is required for foreign nationals wanting to apply for an
intra-company transfer visa, which forms the bulk of the Guptas’
applications to DHA.

The requirements for employing foreigners are governed by the
Immigration Act, the Employment Services Act, and the Labour Relations
Act and together they create a spiderweb of red tape. And all of it
can be waved away with the stroke of a pen, legally. Many such waivers
were signed.

As far as the relationship between the Guptas and DHA goes, it seems
time can even be turned back, with a waiver for a project manager
being signed off on October 1 in South Africa and the paperwork
submitted on October 3 to India.