Western Cape MEC for finance & economic opportunities Mireille Wenger says decisive action is required to address challenges pertaining to SA’s “very poor” visa regime that is blighting investment and job creation efforts.
Wenger said to gather more specific information on challenges experienced by business on the issue the provincial department of economic development & tourism conducted a survey at the end of November 2022.
Asked about methodology used in the survey, Wenger’s spokesperson Georgina Maree told Business Day: “An anonymous Microsoft Forms survey was developed and distributed on November 22 via email to industry bodies. The poll was open for eight days and a total of 133 responses were received. The poll consisted of 11 multiple-choice questions in total.”
The 133 responses were received from business in sectors including ICT, technology/software service, tourism, finance and business services, manufacturing, agriculture/agriprocessing and business process outsourcing.
“A critical finding of this survey was that 78% of respondents rated the immigration application system in SA as very poor compared to other countries the respondents have operations in,” Wenger said.
“Another deeply concerning finding was that 26% of businesses moved their operations overseas, costing countless jobs in SA, as a result of the serious challenges they faced with the national visa system.”
Business Day reported in March the department of home affairs had granted relief to applicants of long-term visas or waivers who are awaiting outcomes of their applications by extending the blanket concession to December 31.
The measure is aimed at addressing the effect of the backlog in processing waiver and visa applications on foreign nationals. The backlog, which runs into the tens of thousands and extends back to 2016, is due to a lack of personnel in the department and the long processes involved in processing an application. This extension is a further extension that was issued in September, to March 23.
Organised business has repeatedly raised concerns about the delays in processing visas, which it says harms investment and economic growth.
The total backlog for permanent residence permits in the system amounted to 49,529, with 40,340 of those at end-May 2022 being outstanding for more than eight months. Of these, 3,524 date back to 2016, 5,187 to 2017, 7,303 to 2018, 10,621 to 2019, 2,968 to 2020, three to 2021 (when the world was in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic) and 10,759 to 2022.
With regard to temporary residence permits, the backlog of applications totals 75,814, with 23,988 having been received within eight weeks as at March 1.
In a statement on Monday, Wenger said the survey found the main reason respondents required a visa was for work purposes, “to employ critical skills that are not available in SA, and because their businesses need to employ foreign staff”. The top three visas applied for were work visa (19%), critical skills work visa (18%) and immigration visa (15%).
The top three complaints with SA’s visa application systems pertained to delays in the approval process, applicants not receiving feedback on their applications and lack of an escalation mechanism for complaints.
Wenger said the top three measures taken by the respondents to address the challenges experienced with the visa application process were moving operations abroad (26%), employing fewer staff (17%) and scaling down operations (17%).
This is bad news for a struggling economy battling the worst energy crisis that has resulted in factories closing down, adding to the country’s record high joblessness rate.
Wenger said: “The fact is that the current visa regime is a significant deterrent to investment and the expansion of existing businesses, costing jobs and economic growth right at a time when we can ill afford to lose either.”
President Cyril Ramaphosa told the SA Investment Conference in Johannesburg in April that the government would streamline application requirements to reduce the time frames for obtaining a work visa as part of his efforts aimed at attracting R2-trillion in new investments over the next five years.
“While the recent commitments from President Ramaphosa to address the serious issues with the visa system were welcomed, words no longer count. Decisive action is required along with timelines to address the well-known challenges,” Wenger said.
“The Western Cape government stands ready to assist in any way possible so we can keep and expand the businesses we have and attract the investment we need to create more jobs for the residents of the province.”
Business Leadership SA CEO Busisiwe Mavuso said SA desperately needed skilled immigrants and criticised the current visa regime for making it “very hard to get them”.
“That makes it more difficult for businesses to expand their operations. Foreign companies cannot commit to major investments in SA when they cannot be confident that they can send their top people into the country,” Mavuso said in her newsletter on Monday.
“We have long aspired to be a gateway into Africa in attracting multinationals to base their regional headquarters here, but of course they cannot do that while it is so difficult to also station their regional leadership here.”
Mavuso said Operation Vulindlela (OV), the joint initiative between the presidency and the National Treasury to drive policy implementation, published a detailed report on visas with good recommendations on how to improve the regime.
“The OV report makes some excellent recommendations. Several concern improving efficiencies, including a streamlined documentation and adjudication process, modernised and automated IT systems, and increased capacity in its immigration branch,” she said.
“Already businesses have been grappling with the loss of skills through emigration — the OV report notes that 900,000 workers emigrated in 2020 mostly to the UK and Australia. The vastly streamlined visa process will enable businesses to partly overcome this loss,” Mavuso said. /With Linda Ensor
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.