South Africa imports 5,000 critical skill workers – half coming from Zimbabwe and India

South Africa imports 5,000 critical skill workers – half coming from Zimbabwe and India

South Africa has issued 4,913 critical skills visas since 2020 to nationals from over 100 countries, with more than half (55%) of those going to people from Zimbabwe and India.

Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber revealed the information in a recent parliamentary Q&A, where he noted that the department exhausted “all efforts” to determine that no South African citizens or permanent residents had the necessary skills and qualifications to fill the positions before issuing the visas to foreign nationals.

“This was done in collaboration with the Department of Higher Education and Training. The methodology used to determine the critical skills is detailed in a Technical Report on Critical Skills published on the website DHET,” he said.

The biggest job category for which Zimbabwean nationals were issued a critical skills visa was trainee auditors, followed by integrated development, software developers, nursing, and ICT systems analysts.

After Zimbabwe, the second biggest import country for critical skills in South Africa is India, where 918 visas have been issued.