BEE specialist calms fears over recent DTI proposals

Press reports that the department of trade and industry is considering removing employment equity and skills development from the empowerment scorecard should not lead to a firestorm in freight industry thinking. As some see it, such a move could raise the bar considerably, and make compliance with empowerment rules more difficult for companies – effectively penalising those that had concentrated on employment equity and skills development in their empowerment strategies. But, according to Fred Jacobs, Safmarine executive for corporate affairs and communication in southern Africa who headed up the sectoral grouping behind the shipping industry’s broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) charter, a lot of ideas about empowerment are being floated at the moment. He pointed to a task team comprising business, government and labour representatives just established by ANC president Jacob Zuma. That is bound to generate a lot of ideas, Jacobs added, no matter how inappropriate some of them might be. The concern about removing the employment equity and skills development, said Jacobs, was that it could be seen as “a move to narrow black enrichment” – and not the across-the-board strategy of broadbased empowerment. “But,” he added, “until government says or does something concrete about changing BBBEE, my recommendation to all the players in the shipping industry is to continue doing what they are currently doing in their empowerment programmes.”