|
SA farmers want danger pay
16/07/2007 07:49 - (SA)
Marietie Louw-Carstens, Beeld
Musina - A wave of desperate people cross the Zimbabwean border every day and then hide on farms. The government should start thinking about paying farmers a danger allowance, says Gideon Meiring, chairperson of the Soutpansberg District Agricultural Union.
"Illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe move freely across the border. Nowadays it feels as if the Zimbabwean border has moverd 50 km south," he said on Sunday.
Farmers feel their lives are threatened by the stream of illegal immigrants coming to seek shelter on their farms.
Dries Joubert, chairperson of TAU SA North, to which most farmers north of the Soutpansberg belong, said the situation on the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe is a time bomb that can have serious consequences for all South Africans.
According to an informed police source more than 500 illegal immigrants a day have been arrested and sent back to Zimbabwe in the past two weeks. And those are only the ones that have been caught - most simply slip into the country though the net.
Meiring says Richard Sloggett, a tour operator from England, recently told him in a letter he is worried about the safety of tourists he takes to farms in Limpopo in view of the large number of illegal immigrants.
Sloggett said he regularly used to take tourists to farms in Limpopo, in the area near the Zimbabwean border.
He said that during his recent visit he was very worried about the safety of the tourists, as border fences had been cut and tourists had on three occasions bumped into groups of illegal immigrants on the farm where they were holidaying.
"We enjoy visiting South Africa, but if the government is not going to tackle the problem of illegal immigrants in earnest, we will not visit the country next year," says the letter in Meiring's possession.
Sloggett writes that women and children are afraid they might be robbed on the farms or that "something worse will happen".
It is particularly this letter and the large number of illegal immigrants from Zimbabwe who have been streaming into South Africa again in the past few weeks, that Meiring and other farmers are extremely worried about.
Especially in the past two weeks, Zimbabweans entering the country, whether legally or illegally, have been descending on the border town of Musina, near the Beit Bridge border post.
"The government should perhaps pay the border farmers a danger allowance, as it cannot deal with the problem of illegal immigrants and ensure that we are safe," said Meiring.
|
News
