Technical report on critical skills list published

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The Critical Skills List technical report provides details of all the processes undertaken in the development of the Critical Skills List, and the actual list gazetted by Home Affairs Minister, Dr Aaron Motsoaledi, on 2 February 2022.

The report follows a Memorandum of Agreement signed by the Higher Education and Training and Home Affairs Departments in January 2020 to facilitate the development of the Critical Skills List.

In terms of the MOA, the Department of Higher Education and Training was mandated to undertake research and produce the technical report which includes the methodology and consultation processes involved in the evidence-based Critical Skills List. The department handed the list to the Department of Home Affairs for consideration.

Nzimande said the Department of Higher Education and Training undertook the research and produced the technical report, titled “Finalisation of the Critical Skills List”, through a major research programme on Labour Market Intelligence.

The Minister said that South Africans live in a globalised economy, where countries often source workers from all over the world to fill gaps in their local economies, and it is therefore, “not surprising that many countries, especially Western countries, regularly compile and publish lists of occupational shortages”.

“The Migration Advisory Committee in the UK publishes a Skilled Occupation List, which is used by immigration authorities to grant special skills visas for potential immigrants. The Australian government also publishes a Skilled Occupation List regularly to draw skilled people into the country.

“Similarly, Canada regularly publishes a list of Occupations of Demand, which it uses to apply its skilled worker visa. In South Africa, the Critical Skills List forms the basis to offer suitably skilled foreign nationals a Critical Skills visa in occupational areas where there is a dire domestic shortage,” Nzimande said.

Nzimande explained that the development of the new list required extensive collaboration between Higher Education and Training, through the Labour Market Intelligence partnership programme, Home Affairs, a host of other government departments, and representatives from business, labour, community and the broader public.

The technical report can be accessed on the department’s Labour Market Intelligence website: https://lmi-research.org.za and the Department of Higher Education and Training website: https://www.dhet.gov.za