{"id":436219,"date":"2020-09-28T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T07:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=436219"},"modified":"2020-09-28T09:53:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-28T07:53:47","slug":"gautengs-plans-to-restrict-jobs-for-foreign-workers-what-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/436219\/gautengs-plans-to-restrict-jobs-for-foreign-workers-what-you-need-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"Gauteng&#8217;s plans to restrict jobs for foreign workers &#8211; what you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Gauteng government has published the Gauteng Township Economic Development Draft Bill for public comment.<\/p>\n<p>First announced in the 2019 State of the Province Address, the bill seeks to enhance the regulatory management of the township economy to ease the regulatory burden on local enterprises.<\/p>\n<p>While the bill covers a number of issues, including job opportunities and growth, it also expressly prohibits foreign nationals from participating in economic activities reserved for citizens of, or persons with &#8216;permanent residency&#8217; status in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Every citizen of and every person with permanent residency status in the republic has a right to practice his or her trade, occupation or profession of choice freely in the province,&#8221; the bill states.<\/p>\n<p>The bill further indicates that a list of business activities will be drawn up which will be<strong> exclusively and solely-reserved for ownership and operation by citizens<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>This list of business activities may be updated at any point based on a number of guiding principles including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Affirming black people in general and Africans in particular, women, youth and people with disabilities;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Growing the economy;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Increasing levels of the country\u2019s Gross Domestic Product;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Upstream production of primary resources or industrialisation;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The exploitation of readily available and developed expertise in the republic;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Potential or capacity to absorb a large number of people into employment;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Opportunities for on-the-job training for the unskilled and unemployed and new graduates;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Opportunities for localisation;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Potential to create new streams of revenue to broaden the tax base and revenue of municipalities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can read the full bill below.<\/p>\n<p><strong>National legislation\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The draft legislation comes after Employment and Labour minister Thulas Nxesi says that government is looking at new regulations to limit the employment of foreign nationals in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Nxesi was <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/414413\/government-looking-at-new-laws-to-limit-the-employment-of-foreigners-in-south-africa\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">responding<\/a> <\/strong>to ongoing violence and protest action by South Africans truck sector in July, with some of the major complaints focusing on the loss of jobs to immigrant workers.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in an interview with eNCA, Nxesi said that the new legislation would not only be limited to the road and freight sector but also other industries which employ a high number of foreign workers.<\/p>\n<p>These include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The hospitality sector;<\/li>\n<li>Restaurants;<\/li>\n<li>Security;<\/li>\n<li>Farming and agriculture.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cWe are looking into this matter in a proper way. However, it is important to remember that we can\u2019t just \u2018do away with foreigners\u2019. Some of them are refugees and legally supposed to be here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe issue that we have to deal with is the illegal people which have been employed without any papers from Home Affairs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Nxesi said that the country\u2019s labour laws state that South Africans should be given preference, but he noted that some bodies were pushing for a complete ban on foreigners in the trucking sector.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Gauteng-Township-Economic-Development-Draft-Bill-.pdf\" width=\"100%\" height=\"600\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/436153\/south-africas-scary-unemployment-figures-are-coming\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">South Africa\u2019s scary unemployment figures are coming<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Gauteng government has published the Gauteng Township Economic Development Draft Bill for public comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":133876,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-436219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436219","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\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436219"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436301,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436219\/revisions\/436301"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}