South Africa seeks retired, emigres to close skills gap

South Africa will urge retired professionals to go back to work and emigres to return as part of a strategy to tackle a gaping skills shortage, seen as the main obstacle to faster economic growth.
Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka outlined a plan on Monday for a broad skills acquisition programme aimed at reinforcing the campaign to boost growth in the continent's biggest economy to an average annual rate of 6 percent by 2010.
"Nothing short of a skills revolution by a nation united will extricate us from the crisis we face ... the most fatal constraint to shared growth is skills," Mlambo-Ngcuka said.
The government is fighting to reduce poverty among South Africa's black majority and reduce a jobless rate of more than 26 percent, but officials say efforts could be hampered by a critical skills shortage - particularly in engineering.
"We will search all around the world for skills. We will first look in South Africa ... people who are retired or who have wrongly deployed themselves. We are looking at South Africans who have left the country," Mlambo-Ngcuka added
By "wrongly deployed" she was referring to people who have moved to occupations unrelated to their professional qualifications. Some engineers have become farmers, while others have joined the financial sector in search of higher rewards.
Opposition parties and predominantly-white trade unions have blamed the government's affirmative action policy for worsening the country's skills shortage. They argue that skilled whites have been pushed out of employment to make way for blacks.
Affirmative action has also been blamed for the exodus of mostly skilled whites in search of greener pastures overseas.
But Mlambo-Ngcuka said the government would not be relaxing its implementation of the affirmative action policy, designed to advance blacks marginalised during decades of apartheid rule.
The recruitment drive will also target skilled Africans who want to return to the continent, Mlambo-Ngcuka said. Part of the effort to accelerate growth involves spending 320 billion rand ($51.02 billion) on infrastructure over the next few years.
Top officials have acknowledged that the skills shortage may obstruct those plans, and are already hampering service delivery.
A task team comprising representatives from the government and business has been put together to help unblock the acquisition of targeted skills and will report back to Mlambo-Ngcuka within 18 months.