THE article in Friday's (February 10) Sowetan about the row over city-parking jobs, in which a concerned citizen is taking the City of Cape Town to task for employing foreign nationals as parking attendants instead of South Africans, highlights the challenges facing our labour market.

We are sitting on a ticking time bomb! The Labour Department must act before it is too late.

There seems to be a disproportionate number of foreign nationals employed in industries, especially in security and restaurants - not to mention parking attendants.

Why South Africans are overlooked is unclear, but there is growing suspicion that the business sector's unbridled pursuit of profits - at the expense of social prosperity, social cohesion and social stability - is at the core of the problem. There is a belief that foreign nationals are used as cheap labour - a form of 21st century slavery.

The role of recruitment agencies in creating a market for cheap labour warrants close scrutiny.

Why does the government allow this crisis to escalate?

Labour laws stipulate that South Africans should be given priority for unskilled jobs.

While we understand why our brothers and sisters from other parts of Africa come to South Africa, one cannot deny that using foreign nationals as cheap labour, subjects locals to unfair competition for scarce resources, which is likely to lead to xenophobic incidents and result in social instability.

Nqabayomzi Kwankwa, UDM deputy secretary general