Invest in human capital, not machinery

ACCORDING to Statistics South Africa, 48 000 jobs were lost in the first quarter of the year. Now that the country is in a recession, the situation could get worse.

In South Africa we don’t create jobs, we destroy them. Listed below are some examples.

Last week I went to my bank to do an over-the-counter transaction and was urged by the teller to do it online. I was also encouraged to do all my banking on the internet.

This means thousands of bank tellers will be out of jobs.

For many years, whenever I wanted to go to the movies, I booked my tickets telephonically. At the cinema I would pick up my tickets from the cashier at the ticket counter. Cinemas have now installed machines. You swipe your credit card on the machine and get your tickets.

The racing industry has also introduced machines. Punters can place their bets at the “Touch Tote” machines. Punters select the number of the horse and the type of bet they want, insert cash and get their bet.

In the motor manufacturing industry, robots are performing the tasks that used to be done manually in the assembly plants.

In the mining industry, mining bosses are finding that it is more efficient and cost-effective to use machines underground, with the result that thousands of workers have been retrenched.

At our international airports in the departure section, we’re greeted by a hall filled with self-service stations. These machines print our boarding passes and check in our luggage.

Machines print out our luggage tags along with our boarding passes. Scanning our passport at the self-service station activates and assesses all our travel details, our full itinerary, who we are travelling with and how many bags we are checking in.

Once we have our boarding pass and luggage tags, we proceed to the luggage drop stations.

Here too there are no workers. In their place are rows of touch-screens and barcode scanners.

We attach our own luggage tags to our bags, scan the barcode and place our luggage on to the conveyor belt, which weighs and assesses each bag before pushing it through to wherever the luggage goes.

We have a vastly reduced workforce at our airports. When we had workers checking in our luggage, there would be about a dozen or more staff manning the checkin counters.

Machines are now taking over our jobs.

Unemployment in South Africa has been described as a ticking time bomb. With more than 9 million South Africans unemployed and there are those who have given up looking for a job, we just cannot afford further job losses.

The government and businesses have a social responsibility and a duty to help ease unemployment and give hope to South Africans. The people of South Africa want a better future. They want a decent education for their children so they have better prospects in an increasingly competitive world. They want jobs. They want their families to prosper and to have the dignity of a decent life.

The biggest challenge facing our country is creating jobs and putting as many South Africans to work as possible.

Job creation is not the sole preserve of the government. The private sector must also create jobs.

To do that, we must invest in human capital and not machinery.

JAYRAJ BACHU

Clare Estate