Risky to create new jobs

Unfortunately this headline (Jobs crisis finally gets attention it deserves, February 21) has been written every single year after the state of the nation address. There has been a jobs summit under each and every president in the democratic era, but all merely became talk shops.

It doesn’t help to speak about job creation on the one hand, and to impose more stringent labour regulations on the other. Despite the unwarranted euphoria over the new president, the business community has not been sucked into the vortex of excitement. My experience has shown me that even over the past two weeks businesses are desperately looking to retrench employees and are hellbent on making sure that their staff complement is streamlined pending the advent of a rushed national minimum wage.

We all know that small business is the engine room of job creation. We also know that small business owners have taken a “holiday” from investing in their own businesses. The sentiment is that it is too dangerous to take a chance and create new jobs, as if it does not work out it will become incredibly hard to retrench staff.

At a labour portfolio committee meeting last week the labour minister specifically stated that there will be regulations stopping businesses from retrenching staff because of the national minimum wage. It is statements like these that reverberate throughout the business community, creating panic.

I hereby put out a call to our new president to engage with the chambers of commerce to get real input from small businesses, who have invariably had no voice.

Michael Bagraim DA labour spokesman