TOSSING THE GREY SHOES

Well I haven't much of what this should have impacted - if anything there has been a steady decline, so I am tempted to say - show me the figures of what has been put back into place.

Tossing the grey shoes
Matuma Letsoalo
31 March 2007 11:59

South African Institutions of higher learning need to produce 1 000 more engineers and 15 000 more artisans per year.

Grey-shoe and red-tape salary structures in the public service are set to be dropped as government battles to fill vacancies. Gone are the days of rigid career progression and set-in-stone pay scales, says Lewis Rabkin, spokesperson for Public Service and Administration Minister Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. Skills shortages in the state impact fundamentally on economic growth because infrastructure spending and development are critical factors in enhancing growth and wellbeing.

Rabkin says about 21% of state jobs are vacant and most of these are in critical areas such as engineering. The accelerated and shared growth initiative of South Africa’s (Asgisa) annual report, released last week, revealed that half the professional engineering posts in the public service were vacant. Of those filled, many were occupied by under-qualified technicians. The report shows that, of the 231 local municipalities in the country, 79 have no civil or transport engineers, technologists or technicians; 42 have only one civil or transport engineer, technologist or technician and 42 have only one civil or transport technician.

Rabkin said the reason for the high level of vacancies in the public service was that there was no effective mechanism in place to retain staff as the private sector is a much more competitive payer. “All occupations in the public service are remunerated by a single standardised salary structure, therefore posing a challenge for government to adequately and competitively remunerate the diverse categories of occupations, especially critical and scarce skills." “The occupation-specific dispensation aims to improve the public service’s ability to attract and retain skills.”

Rabkin said the dispensation would introduce unique salary structures per occupation, including uniform prescribed grading structures and job profiles, as well as progression and career path and opportunities based on competencies, experience and performance. “The dispensation will also include dual career paths that allow professionals and specialists to earn salaries equal to or higher than managers without moving into management posts,” said Rabkin. He said the implementation of this policy would start in July and immediately deal with the shortage of doctors, nurses and lawyers in state service. Rabkin said his department was also working with the national department of education on the re-skilling of engineers in particular, through targeted training. This was mainly because the output of graduates in engineering the country’s institutions of higher learning was not high enough to resolve the engineering skills shortage.

A recent study by the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) shows that South Africa needs to produce 1 000 more engineers, 300 more technicians and about 15 000 artisans a year.The current estimated figures produced by universities and universities of technology, formerly technikons, are between 1 300 and 1 400 engineers and 5 000 artisans a year.