Improve workers' lives - Zuma

2008-05-02 09:21

Johannesburg - Much more needs to be done to improve the living conditions of the country's workers, said ANC president Jacob Zuma on Thursday.

"Primary amongst the areas of focus are our rural workers, especially farm workers," Zuma said, addressing a crowd at the Workers' Day celebrations at James Motlatsi Stadium in Klerksdorp.

Zuma said the ANC and its allies considered rural development as a central pillar of the struggle against unemployment, poverty and inequality.

"Workers living in rural areas face the brunt of poverty. Many of them work long hours for poverty wages."

Women, in particular, formed the majority of residents in rural areas, and faced the burden of poverty more than men, especially in the former homelands and Bantustans.

'Vigorous implementation of laws'

"We took a resolution in Polokwane that ANC branches would work together with the progressive trade union movement, particularly the Food and Agricultural Workers Union, government agencies and civil society to promote the rights of farm workers," Zuma said.

He said that would include the ensuring the " vigorous" implementation of laws that protect farm workers and farm-dwellers.

President of United Democratic Movement, Bantu Holomisa, said South African economic policies had thus far proven themselves unable to adequately absorb external shocks to the economy - such as the food crisis, interest rate increases, increases in oil prices and now the impending threat of electricity rate hikes.

"These issues deny any attempts to introduce more black people into the formal economic mainstream as they perpetuate and even worsen the current high unemployment rates," Holomisa said in a statement.

The policies did not adequately cater for the ever-increasing numbers of youth looking to join the formal employment mainstream each year.

Rather, the opportunities decreased with each passing year, Holomisa said.

- SAPA