Talking in Tongues Whichever way you say it, jobs mean cash
| From Afrikaans to Zulu (including Yiddish), SA has them all — but there’s always room for more Cape Town’s call centre industry is booming, but could be doing better if visas were easier to get
WHEN Maria Wueltener’s two children were grown up, the 53year-old German was ready for a new challenge.
Since June, she has been working in a call centre in Cape Town, thanks to a five-year “critical skills” visa.
And she’s loving it. “I wish I had known about this sooner in my life,” Wueltener said this week. “I love being here. I love the weather, the people, the lifestyle and I never want to go back.”
Wueltener is one of the hundreds of foreigners working in the “business process outsourcing” industry in Cape Town, home to 70% of the country’s call centres.
Mostly young and unattached foreign students fill these specialised language positions, often working for retail, airline, finance and tech companies.
They earn R10 000 to R15 000 a month — about double what their South African counterparts get — but the industry says it is struggling to translate high demand into growth due to strict migration laws.
Many call centres require specialised language skills — job ads this week in Cape Town called for people fluent in languages as diverse as Flemish, Turkish, Hebrew and Arabic — and are forced to source them from other countries.
But recruiters say the critical skills work visa introduced by the Department of Home Affairs in 2014 has hobbled the hunt for staff. Before its introduction, work permits usually came through in two months, but the new visas take at least twice as long, according to many.
Esther Acker, MD of specialist foreign-language recruitment company AKA, said there was a misconception in the government that foreigners were stealing local jobs, but the opposite was true. “We have clients who have grown their BPOs [business process outsourcing] to 1 000 employees, of which 800 are South African, so there’s huge job creation for the country. These jobs would not exist CRITICAL SKILLS: German citizen Maria Wueltener loves her job and life in Cape Town [without the foreigners].”
Companies choose South Africa because it has good, cheap English-speaking staff and because its time zone covers most of Europe, where many international clients are based.
Staff contracts are usually one to two years, but up to 60% of workers end up staying longer. German is the most sought-after language but Scandinavian languages and Mandarin are on the rise.
Gareth Pritchard, of Business Processing Enabling South Africa, said major brands were looking to invest in South Africa. US online retailer Amazon and German airline Lufthansa both had South African call centres.
“For every 100 jobs created, about R25-million is put into the economy per annum,” said Pritchard. “Anything that irritates the process weakens the country’s value proposition. Home affairs are engaging with industry and there is some very positive news. But there must be clear understanding in Pretoria that these people are job creators and not job takers . . . there must be a more simple process or fast track.”
An immigration manager at a major international retailer, who did not want to be named, said delays in work permits affected head counts, reduced profits and prevented growth.
Home affairs spokesman Mayihlome Tshwete said the government had changed the old system, which was not “socially or economically conscious”, to make it easier to issue critical skills work permits. “Critical skills are an acknowledgement that certain skills are not available locally, and [therefore] are prioritised ahead of general work permits. There has been a clear improvement in issuing those permits and turnaround time is generally four weeks. The plan is to always improve.” Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.sundaytimes.co.za MAZEL TOV: Caely-Jo Levy and her band Yid Dish are passionate about keeping the Yiddish language and culture alive
These people are job creators and not job takers . . . there must be a more simple process