Chairperson,
in summary our priorities remain employment creation and preservation by leveraging government labour market tools, the labour market conducive to investment based on stability appropriate skills and employment incentives. Social justice based on social dialog backed up by enforcement. And, again jobs, jobs.
The hon Chair of the Portfolio Committee Comrade Lindelwa and NFP hon Sibisi raised the issue of the truck drivers. Truck drivers indeed are not a scarce skill in South Africa. Some companies in KwaZulu Natal have employed 100% foreign truck drivers claiming that their trucks are too sophisticated for South African drivers who do not have such skills. That is nonsense. This must be looked into very seriously in terms of our employment policy which we are revising. This preference of foreign nationals over locals has been extended by the employers to agriculture, to the hospitality industry, hotel industry and security industry. It's very sensitive.
But now I've heard of late, it has gone into the retail industry. In fact that is why some of the workers in some of the retail big stores are meant to stand all day when they are on the tills.
But, there's only one reason and it is to exploit the vulnerable and the desperate foreign nationals who are running away from the political instability at woes in their own country. This is a matter we have to deal with but is very sensitive with the massive unemployment rate in the country. But equally, we must be responsible. If we want to promote African trade and expand our markets to the African continent, we can't be reckless. We will have to look into the matter very carefully and start putting quotas and enforcing those quotas that we are going to put.
Imagine this, the President of Nigeria three weeks ago said openly "no sector in Nigeria will employ persons who come from outside if Nigerians can do that job. Imagine if it was said by South Africa. So, what I'm trying to say is we will have to be very careful how we do it because we are seen as a leader in the continent but equally we want to access those markets in the continent. And, I must say I appreciate... in fact the ANC, IFP, NFP and the AIC for supporting the budget vote, I did not hear the objection from the FF Plus. I request that... but I want to emphasise from