Tag: Dr Ivor Blumenthal

BBBEE Employees are not entitled. Often, they are just COMPROMISED. A major problem is developing in companies which have embraced BBBEE, where Employee Ownership or Beneficiary Trusts have been created. Employees who happen to also be BBBEE Beneficiaries, sometimes misunderstand that they are ordinary employee’s and do not have a favoured, preferred or somehow entitled status, in-comparison with other employee’s in the company.

Nerine Kahn spent 10 years fixing the CCMA. What a decade of achievement! A superb interview conducted with a straight shooter. In 2006 Nerine Kahn moved from the Department of Labour to the CCMA leaving a LEGACY PAR EXCELLENCE in her wake when she left in 2016. Essential listening for insight into the CCMA.

As one of the original members of the SAQA commission which worked on the Professional Body framework and regulations, I am now astounded by how existing and aspirant Professional Bodies, but more so, pre-existing Statutory Bodies, are consciously misinterpreting what Continuous Professional Development(CPD) is and how it needs to be quality assured.

Is South Africa headed down a road of jobless growth where a capital-intensive economy is incompatible with a labour-intensive need? According to an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report reviewed in Forbes Magazine, 11 August 2017, there are about 71 million unemployed 15 to 24-year-olds around the globe, many of them facing long-term unemployment. This is close to a historic peak of 13%.

The two programmes, the Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) created by and falling under SARS, and the Youth Empowerment Service (YES) by the Department of Trade and Industry, are designed to work together and to compliment one-another.

If you consider that there have been many grey and confusing areas in-relation to BBBEE since the publication of the first Scorecard in 2003, and then compounding the ambiguity with the publication of the second Scorecard in 2013, these latest amendments in 2018, clarify a number of issues and also create a number of opportunities for BBBEE participating companies.

I am regularly concerned by just how easily and it may be argued intentionally a Professional Body misinterprets its obligation towards the enforcement of Ethical and Behaviourally acceptable conduct on the one hand, and on the other its obligation to ensure acceptable levels of competency and ongoing personal development to maintain that competent profile. These are neither the same thing, nor are they interchangeable.

Enterprise Development is the act of investing time and capital in helping people establish, expand or improve businesses. In turn, it helps people earn a living, rise out of poverty and achieve long-term economic growth. Any business operating in South Africa today is faced with the task of addressing the B-BBEE codes, of which the largest point allocation is for Enterprise and Supplier Development.

"Not every person with a qualification can be regarded as a professional" - This is becoming something of a mantra when explaining what it is a Professional Body stands for. A Professional Body is not a Training Provider and SAQA has done itself a disservice surely, by allowing Training Providers to register as Professional Bodies?

Ernest Mazansky, Tax Director, Werksmans Attorneys and Dr Ivor Blumenthal, discuss the controversy of the recent leak of hacked client records called the Paradise...