Last year the Acting Minister of Public Service and Administration, Thulas Nxesi, revealed in the National Assembly that there are 75 senior-level managers in Northern Cape departments without the required qualifications. 

At the time, Nxesi stated that the Departments of Economic Development and Tourism, Education, and Health each have ten senior managers without the necessary qualifications. Next is the Department of Roads and Public Works with eight. The Premier’s Office and Agriculture Department have seven each. Saul revealed that as a small province, it is rare to hold on to qualified people with rare skills as they prefer to go to bigger provinces.

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“We are sitting with a major problem of recruiting people with rare skills in the province. It's not only a problem faced by municipalities, it's also a problem for the provincial government. It's very difficult in the province to find and employ properly qualified CFOs and chartered accountants. Those who come just stay for a year or two years and then they leave. That’s one of the challenges that we are sitting with because we are a small province competing with much bigger provinces like Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Western Cape, and even the Free State,” he said.

Saul detailed that the legislation system has also made it difficult for the province to create some sort of incentives to attract people with rare skills and make them stay in the province. He, however, explained that to deal with this challenge they have tried to strengthen the premier’s bursary in the province to produce their accountants and engineers. Saul further revealed that this year they have sent over 200 students from the province to various higher learning institutions to get training on these critical skills.

OFM News