In an interesting response to a question I posed in parliament, the employment & labour minister stated that employment equity reports in the 2020 reporting cycle indicated that only 2.6% of the workforce were foreign nationals.
This means that even removing all foreign nationals from our workforce would not make a dent in the unemployment figures. The government’s unfortunate frenetic activity in trying to curtail the employment of foreign nationals is merely creating xenophobic responses and scapegoats.
What is more important is the fact that the department has no idea how many undocumented and unregistered foreign nationals are working in our economy. The reality is creating quotas is not going to help in this particular sphere.
The only way we are going to be able to tackle this issue is to ensure we have more effective border controls. As everyone knows, we have a “washing line” as a fence between ourselves and Zimbabwe and no-one seems to identify this as a problem.
Michael Bagraim, MP
DA shadow deputy employment & labour minister
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