MEC Winde: Language schools and tourism sector losing money

Melon Radebe and Rentse Khiba
25 July 2015

Western Cape MEC of Economic Opportunities, Alan Winde today said the new visa regulations has had a negative economic impact on the tourism and education sector.

During a press briefing today, MEC Winde touched on the national regulators impact on tourism in the province. He made sure to highlight the fact that despite tourism in South Africa being affected by the new visa regulations, an additional sector affected is the education sector, namely English language schools around the country.

Meanwhile the English language schools, which are well known for teaching foreign nationals living in South Africa, Basic English were reported to be losing students at a rapid pace according to Winde. 

The MEC stated that on recent visits to English language schools across the province the amount of students had been cut down by 50% and that it had reached the point where language school teachers needed to be retrenched.

 

In recent reports Johannes Kraus, chairman of Education South Africa, said more than R34 million has been lost between January to March 2015. With accommodation prices included it was R42 million this year so far.

 

Winde claimed that when one group of tourists tries to apply for a visa at the same time, others in the group would be unsuccessful. This of course discouraged tourists.

 

MEC Winde mentioned that whenever tourists rate their top 10 cities to visit, Cape Town is always included.  But now that the new visa regulations have been implemented, people don’t want to come. They now prefer to either travel to Australia or Kenya.

 

He also went on to say that tour companies were more focused on drawing tourists to these countries. However, Winde said that the local tourism industry could learn a lot from these countries. Deputy Minister of Tourism, Tokozile Xasa plans to visit China. Xasa wants to see how the Chinese tourism industry is run.