Accountants, engineers to return

Pretoria - The widening economic crisis could make South Africans working offshore return faster than planned.

Trade union Solidarity has therefore made an urgent appeal to the government to compile a plan of action to support people laid off overseas.

Solidarity chief executive Flip Buys announced that circumstances at, inter alia, coal mines in Australia could lead to a labour crisis.

"Australia is one of the largest coal exporters to China and rumours are already doing the rounds of large-scale layoffs at the mines, especially because of the sharp fall in the price of coal."

Jaco van der Merwe, a senior manager in the immigration division of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), says that a foreign worker's work permit expires the moment that he/she is retrenched.

The consequence is that the worker has to leave the country in which the work permit was granted if he does not get other employment.

South Africa is seeing no decline in applications for work permits for skilled workers (engineers and geologists) in the mining industry, Van der Merwe says.

"We are incredibly busy and handle between 100 and 200 applications every month. South Africa's demand for skills in the mining and construction industries is increasing.

"But there has certainly been a clear falloff in the steel industry and the financial sector," he concedes.

Ernst & Young director Ajen Sita, in an informal discussion with Sake24, mentioned that a "high percentage" of South African accountants working in the financial sector overseas are now beginning to return to the country. Their citizenship will count against them when non-Australians are the first to be laid off.

- Sake24