The departmental spokesperson, Teboho Thejane, states that the concerns follow after the Economic Active Population (EAP) report of the North West Province revealed this during the joint 2022 Employment and Equity workshop that was held in Mahikeng and Rustenburg by the Department of Employment and Labour and the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) last week.

According to Thejane, the Assistant Director for Policy Development, Innocent Makwarela, revealed that 2019 to 2022 statistics from the report, received from the province, indicated that North West is still below 1% of the required 2%, which is the minimum that the cabinet had set for hiring people with disabilities. He adds that Makwarela called on employers in the province to urgently address this issue, as the province dropped from 0.9% to 0.7% between 2019 and 2021.

Meanwhile, Thejane further stated that Makwarela also raised concerns over the high number of foreign nationals who are employed in all sectors, including in positions that do not include scarce skills in North West. He said that Makwarela revealed that the percentage of foreign nationals employed at lower levels in the province is 11.7%.

OFM News