Highly skilled South African visa holders to receive generous allowance

January 07 2010 by Liam Clifford

The South African government is to pay a generous allowance to people from abroad who want to move to South Africa on a skilled South African work visa.

The allowance is intended to boost the number of skilled people coming to work in South Africa in order to fill skills shortages in the country. The scheme will initially be offered to foreigners who will be working in the public sector or those who are part of exchange programmes.

The statement said that firms or organisations taking on skilled foreign nationals can offer them 30 per cent of their “commencing salary notch” as an incentive to move to South Africa.

Richard Levin of the Department of Public Service and Administration said the scheme is intended to make it easier for South African firms to attract talent from abroad.

Levin pointed out that the allowance will help the public sector fill critical skills gaps, “the rationale is to provide for adequate sourcing alternatives... where a skills scarcity is such that human resource provisioning is not possible from our own labour market.”

Similar allowances are also set to be introduced to lure South African doctors back from working in the UK and elsewhere, to boost the number of doctors moving to South Africa and working in the country’s public hospitals.

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