National Scarce Skills List - Call for Comments

You may remember Dept Labour's National Scarce Skills List? It has not been updated for a long time, due to changes and improvements taking place in the way it is developed. Now the DHET has just released a call for comments on the top 100 occupations identified in the updated National Scarce Skills List.

Why comment?

Your comments are important. The National Scarce Skills List informs the immigration policy of the Department of Home Affairs, and also guides and directs considerable investment by the public and private sector in educating and training people to fill the identified scarce skills. The list also informs the career choices of students.

View or download the list below and submit comments to Ms Mmaphake Ramasodi by 20 June 2014. Please also tweet your comments with the hashtag #scarceskills, and these will be listed below as they appear on Twitter.

What is a scarce skill again?

If you need to be reminded what a scarce skill is, click here. 

Questions about the National Scarce Skills List

 

Professor Hoosen Rasool was part of the team that developed the List. If you have any questions about how it was prepared, please post them in the comments section below and we will ask him to respond to you, and post his replies here.

What is in the List?

The document is 24 pages long, is comprehensive but easy to read. It contains the following headings which help contextualise the list, explain its origins, and how it will be used:

• INTRODUCTION
• PURPOSE
• LIFESPAN OF LIST
• KEY CONCEPTS
• UTILITY OF NATIONAL SCARCE SKILLS LIST
• PROCESSES FOLLOWED IN COMPILING THE NATIONAL LIST OF SCARCE SKILLS
• INFORMATION SOURCES
• CONSULTATIONS
• KEY FINDINGS
• RANKING SCORECARD FOR NATIONAL SCARCE SKILLS LIST (2014)
• NATIONAL SCARCE SKILLS LIST (2014)
• REFERENCES
• ANNEXURE A: CLUSTER OF OCCUPATION

 

 The National Scarce Skills List (draft)

 

This is the draft list, awaiting comments from the public before it will be finalised.

Tweets

Tweets about "#scarceskills"

Frequently Asked Questions

I don’t see any listing of entrepreneurial skills? Business management and the like?

Correct. While entrepreneurship is a national priority (see the National Integrated HRD Plan, 2014), this is viewed as a critical skill not a scarce skill (see the List above for definitions of the two).

When will the final National Scarce Skills List be available?

Approximately the end of August is a likely date.

See also

• Sharon Snell's blog post on the list, with an insurance sector perspective