Letter of the Day: BEE must be qualitative

DESPITE my wholehearted commitment to the "hitherto disadvantaged" over many years, I'd fail the BEE scorecard since I am a sole proprietorship and not an employment mogul. I'd never meet the figures. I wish to criticise the model on academic grounds. It is highly technical and sterile, with very little place for compassion, interpretation, incentives and humanity. It smacks of the old "apparently objective", sanitised apartheid ideology that I fought during much of the 1980's, although I'm sure that's not the intention. Some people will clutch gladly at the comparison, however. Where are the criteria for measuring the quality of the process - qualitative criteria related to fair access, quality of involvement, quality of opportunities for growth; quality of the person's own productivity, service, loyalty and commitment to the company and criteria to determine the quality of education or training offered. Its no use inducting and absorbing people for the purpose of generating good numerical government training statistics, when 90% of them then fail to produce within the company because of mismatches done in haste, or unsuitability, or because the quality of the experience and support was poor and not monitored. There also has to be an element of sustainable productivity on the part of the beneficiary otherwise the scorecard will fail and concomitantly alienate many enterprising people as their small companies sink under an unproductive overload. The state must not push in people who are frustrated because they have no entry into the economy, and transform them into frustrated but unproductive people because their experience is actually a shallow statistical facade to escape the BEE strategy. With respect, the whole process needs to be more carefully thought through, especially the qualitative (not quantitative) criteria for success. There needs to be enough breadth in all training and experience to ensure that persons are not pawns or victims only always seeking jobs, but rather people who can later create jobs. I have supported the present government for 22 years (since a time when it really mattered for a white person to do so), and wish it well with the endeavour but don't think the eventual use of a hammer and anvil will work either. Tour operating companies are very small (85% have three or less persons) and are thus poor at producing extra jobs because a seat in a vehicle taken by a learner is an actual massive daily loss to the company. With four seats available, a quarter of the income has gone if a single learner is taken on, and within a short time learnership payments are wiped out. Small companies might have to compensate for the past in a way that is more easily absorbed by them. My own "payment" has been as a result of conscience, although I in fact vigorously defied apartheid for many years at some personal cost, and did not support it. Dr Alex Coutts See Speakers' Corner for more views on industry issues. (Disclaimer: The views expressed in this letter are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of TNN and Now Media.)