ActionSA Calls on SA Government to #HireOurEngineers

22 April 2021

ActionSA is calling upon every unemployed South African engineer to register their details with us so that we can fight for their rights to employment over opportunities being offered to Cuban engineers.

It is shameful that in a country such as ours where countless numbers of unemployed graduates roam our streets with few opportunities to practice their craft, our government can prioritise the employment of Cuban engineers.

The truth is that South Africa produces engineers that are sought after the world over, and have all the skills, knowledge, and experience to be involved in the infrastructure renewal needed in our country.

This is precisely why ActionSA is calling on all unemployed South African engineers to visit https://www.actionsa.org.za/hire-our-engineers/ and register their details. We will provide this list to the Department of Water and Sanitation and will require that South Africans be prioritised in their own country.

ActionSA has already intervened successfully when the Department of Health employed Cuban doctors to provide additional capacity in responding to the pandemic at a cost of over R400 million.

By working with the South African Medical Association, we were able to provide the details of unemployed doctors to the Department and initiate a process which led to their employment.

Our country has a crisis of unemployment that leaves more than 12 million South Africans without the dignity that comes with work.

Our students and their families sacrifice everything to gain access to opportunity and are frequently denied. The preferential treatment provided to employ Cubans over South Africans is criminal.

These Cuban engineers come from institutions which are inferior to our own, they do not speak the languages of the people they will be overseeing, and who come from a country that is the very example of the consequences of a mismanaged economy with a collapsed infrastructure itself.

Nothing could demonstrate this more than the recent Hammanskraal Water Hearings, which saw experts from across our country demonstrate precise expertise in what is needed to address the water crisis in Hammanskraal.

Now, presumably, the people of Hammanskraal must rely on Cuban engineers to address their 16 year wait for their basic human right of clean and safe drinking water.

The South African Government must end this ridiculous pattern of assisting other nations around the world when it is failing, in the most fundamental ways, our very own skilled and qualified professionals right here at home.

Issued by Herman Mashaba, President, ActionSA, 22 April 2021