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JEREMY MAGGS: The Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, has moved swiftly to clarify a misunderstanding on the gazetted regulation recommendations on the critical skills and general work visas position. He joins me now. Minister, first of all, can you clarify then how the amended regulations for the critical skills work visa differ from previous regulations in practical terms for applicants?
AARON MOTSOALEDI: Ja, maybe it’s important, Jeremy, to start with the background. In the 2022 State of the Nation Address (Sona), the president (Cyril Ramaphosa) announced that we need to review the country’s visas in order to encourage investment, encourage the growth of the economy of South Africa and reduce unemployment. So for that reason, under Operation Vulindlela, which is run by the Presidency and Treasury together, he appointed the former director-general in the Presidency, Mr Mavuso Msimang, who came with eight recommendations.
Four of them were policy recommendations, meaning what new policies [are needed] and what policies need to change in order to achieve what the president has asked for. The other four were process recommendations, meaning what processes are undertaken when a visa is being issued, which may not be necessary, which are just delaying the process when actually they may not be serving any legitimate or big purpose.
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So those are the eight things that we’re looking at. The simplest ones in the process is submitting certain documents, like in the policies, which we’re doing away with, you have to submit an X-ray film of your chest for a radiologist to see whether you have got TB (tuberculosis) or what. You are supposed to present a police clearance certificate from the countries that you have worked in in the past five years, which means you are likely to run all over the world obtaining police clearance certificates.
Now, all those things are being changed. For instance, the X-ray has just been abolished completely. The police clearance has been confined to 12 months, only in the country that you have been in the past 12 months do we want the police clearance.
As to what happened in the past, it’s not necessary. Those are some of the process changes.
Then the policy changes that are new are, for instance, the manner in which we deal with the scarce skills visa, the manner in which we deal with a general work visa, the introduction of the Trusted Employer Scheme. I don’t know whether you want me to expand on those, what actually they mean, Jeremy, I’m in your hands.
JEREMY MAGGS: No, what I do want to know is where the confusion came in.
AARON MOTSOALEDI: The confusion about, for instance, that we are abolishing the scarce skills (list) and replacing it with a point system, is that the confusion you’re talking about?
JEREMY MAGGS: Yes, that’s the confusion I’m talking about.
AARON MOTSOALEDI: Well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the manner in which people understood when they read, because I was just disturbed when I read in the papers that they say we have replaced the critical skills list, that we are replacing it with a point system.
My thinking is that the confusion came because throughout, Jeremy, people never understood how a critical skills visa works and how a general work visa works, they were confusing them.
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For instance, one of them, which is a general work visa, you need a certificate from the Department of Labour, whereas the critical skills list doesn’t need any certificate from the Department of Labour. All it needs is that critical skill must have been gazetted by the minister after it has been worked on by the Department of Higher Education, Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), and it has been passed by Nedlac (National Economic Development and Labour Council), then we put that skill on the gazette as a scarce skill.
Once you produce a certificate that proves that your profession is in that scarce skill and secondly, once you produce a letter from the employer that there is a company that wants to employ you, Home Affairs has got no option, but to issue a critical skills list (visa).
Whereas with the general work visa, because general work are things like domestic work, working on the farms, in the gardens, in the hospitality industry and so on. Now, those are not critical skills, but what happened is, in terms of Regulation 18 of that section of that Immigration Act, the prospective employer is supposed to go to the Department of Employment and Labour and prove that everything has been done to look for a South African who can do that job, and the company has failed to locate such a South African, a citizen or a permanent resident who can do that job, and so they’re forced to go across the borders.
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Now, that we have changed, because it was very impractical, for instance, can you imagine hiring a domestic worker and having to prove to the Department of Labour that you have looked all over South Africa, you couldn’t find a domestic worker? We regarded that as impractical, even though it has been in operation from 2002. So we wanted to change it into the point system, not the critical skills one. So I think that’s where the confusion came.
JEREMY MAGGS: Minister, there has been criticism from Nedlac that led to the withdrawal of the regulations. Do you need to improve the consultation process going forward?
AARON MOTSOALEDI: No. The consultation process was okay. The mistake, which I came publicly to regret and apologise for, is that the officials gazetted it a day before the closing date. In other words, they chose a closing date for a particular date, but before that closing date, a day before the closing date, it was gazetted, which is procedurally wrong, because when you put a closing date and ask people to give input, some might do it very last minute, so you can’t just gazette before the closing date has passed. That’s the mistake that really, I wanted to correct when I withdrew, and which is what Nedlac was complaining about.
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That was the main thing they were really complaining about, the gazetting on the day before the closing date because the public consultation was supposed to be 30 days, but officials gave 60 days and then cut it by one day. It’s unfair because it’s not the public that asked for 60 days, it’s the department that gave it. So they can’t say, because ordinarily it’s 30 days and we have given 60 days, we can cut it. That’s procedurally wrong and that’s the part which I thought, let me withdraw and regazette it and follow the right processes.
JEREMY MAGGS: Minister, thank you very much indeed for that clarification. I appreciate it.
