sector skills plan for the health sector in south africa

later. No increases in health professionals and workers occurred, despite the growing population
requiring public health services and the increasing burden of disease mainly due to HIV and AIDS. Had
staff levels been adjusted to allow for population growth, another 64 087 posts (or a staff complement
of 315 087) were required by 2008. If further allowance were made for the disease burden, the total
public sector staff complement had to be 330 791 in 2008 just to retain the status quo of 1997/98. The
shortfall was 79 791 posts.
4.2.2 POSITIONS IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR 156
The total number of posts in the private sector was estimated by adding the vacancies reported in the
WSPs submitted to the HWSETA in June 2010 to the estimates of total employment in each occupation
(see Chapter 2).
The total number of positions in the private sector can be seen in Table 4-1. The way in which the
estimates of total employment were derived is described in Section 2.5. The total number of filled
positions is 178 921. The vacancies that were added to this are those reported by employers in their
WSP submissions of 2010. If these are added, there are at least 183 102 positions in the private sector.
Of these, 46.6% are for professionals, 22.0% for community and personal service workers and 16.9% for
clerical and administrative staff. As mentioned in Chapter 2, these are very conservative estimates of
employment and the actual number of positions available is expected to be slightly higher.
Table 4-1 Total number of positions in the private health organisations
Employed Vacancies Total positions
OFO Group
N N N %
Managers 6 571 66 6 637 3.6
Professionals 83 276 2 058 85 334 46.6
Technicians and Trades Workers 7 921 225 8 146 4.4
Community and Personal Service Workers 38 519 1 786 40 305 22.0
Clerical and Administrative Workers 30 915 15 30 930 16.9
Sales Workers 2 780 24 2 804 1.5
Machinery Operators and Drivers 2 209 6 2 215 1.2
Elementary Workers 6 730 1 6 731 3.7
Total 178 921 4 181 183 102 100.0
Source: Calculated from the HWSETA WSPs for 2010 and the MEDpages database.
Table 4-2 provides more information on the professional positions in the private sector organisations.
The largest group is nursing professionals (37.4% of all positions). This is followed by medical
practitioners (18.2%) and Health Diagnostic and Promotion Professionals (16.7%). The latter group
includes professions such as pharmacists, optometrists and dieticians.
156 Private sector includes parastatal and other public sector organisations outside the Public Service.
44