Lack of skills are a real problem says Zille

Image: GCIS

She told reporters in Cape Town only 10% of the province's economically active population had a three-year-degree, one of the requirements of a senior management position.

Public service regulations required a university degree and five years of relevant management experience.

According to statistics compiled by Zille's department, 6% of whites, 2.1% of coloureds, 1.7% of blacks and 0.3% of Indians in the province had at least a three-year-degree.

She said these figures would be even more narrow if one included the relevant experience, which many young graduates did not have.

The racial representativeness of the 75 senior managers in the 80,000 strong government workforce was therefore a moot point.

The challenge lay in hiring professionally qualified specialists.

"These skills, and the work experience are needed at high levels of government and can take years to develop. That is why the Constitution and the law make the skills pool a key criterion. Employment equity plans need to focus on building the requisite skills pools," she said.

Setting the record straight

A recent media report attacked Zille over Employment Equity (EE) figures for senior management positions that were released in Parliament.

According to a Commission of Employment Equity's (CEE) annual report released in September last year the province was the worst EE performer.

Zille said she felt compelled to set the record straight, as Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant was planning to release a new CEE report on Thursday (18 April), an event to which they were not invited.

She said the previous report had serious anomalies, which she raised with Oliphant, but had not yet had a response.

"The CEE report said its figures reflected the status of EE during the period April 2011 to March 2012. However these figures weren't available at the time the report was compiled and released," Zille said.

Provincial governments were only due to submit those figures in October last year. The other problem she had was that calculations included both provincial and local government data across the province.

Source: Sapa via I-Net Bridge