{"id":12832,"date":"2012-05-17T17:34:02","date_gmt":"2012-05-17T15:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=12832"},"modified":"2012-05-18T10:24:55","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T08:24:55","slug":"ict-industry-sheds-jobs-despite-skills-shortage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/it-services\/12832\/ict-industry-sheds-jobs-despite-skills-shortage\/","title":{"rendered":"ICT industry sheds jobs despite skills shortage"},"content":{"rendered":"

The information and communications technology (ICT) industry is shedding jobs despite a skills shortage, trade union Solidarity<\/a> said on Thursday (17 May 2012).<\/p>\n

“ICT companies retrench highly skilled employees for various reasons such as employment equity, thereby creating a skills shortage which in turn leads to outsourcing, inflated salaries and recruitment from abroad,” said spokesman Marius Croucamp<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, black empowered technology group Gijima<\/a> said it would retrench an undisclosed number of workers to improve efficiency and reduce costs.<\/p>\n

Gijima would not say how many employees would be affected “due to the consultative HR (human resources) processes that we need to follow”.<\/p>\n

The company said it intended reducing staff costs by between eight and 12 percent. This would be completed by mid-August and the business restructuring would come into full effect in July.<\/p>\n

Croucamp said Gijima had already retrenched about 200 employees since December and planned to retrench another 200 employees by mid-August.<\/p>\n

“Gijima has retrenched approximately 150 permanent employees and 50 contract workers since December,” he said.<\/p>\n

The union would meet with Gijima next week to discuss the job losses.<\/p>\n

“A number of Gijima employees received a letter yesterday [Wednesday], informing them that a new retrenchment process was in the offing,” Croucamp said.<\/p>\n

Solidarity said retrenchments were taking place at Nokia Siemens Networks<\/a> while the State Information Technology Agency (Sita) was restructuring. It was not yet known if the restructuring would involve retrenchments.<\/p>\n

“Sita’s restructuring process affects approximately 40 percent of its 2200 employees,” Croucamp said.<\/p>\n

“Meanwhile, Nokia Siemens Networks is also carrying out large-scale retrenchments in South Africa, Nigeria and Germany. Approximately 160 employees will be affected by the retrenchments.”<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa looking to India for ICT skills<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA\u2019s slide towards the wrong side of the digital divide<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Shortfall in computing and IT skills<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Most sought-after ICT skills in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The information and communications technology (ICT) industry is shedding jobs despite a skills shortage, trade union Solidarity said on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7923,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[26,767,1398,2719,2855,1632],"class_list":["post-12832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-it-services","tag-headline","tag-ict","tag-jobs","tag-marius-croucamp","tag-nokia-siemens-network","tag-solidarity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12832"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12834,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12832\/revisions\/12834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}