Workers get 14c, live with pigs
2003-07-07 14:43
Ermelo - Labour inspectors discovered an alleged "slave camp" last week where farm labourers earn only 14c over three months and share their environment with pigs.
The inspectors swooped on Gideon Buhrmann's De Emigratie farm near Ermelo on Thursday as a follow-up to complaints by workers and councillors that about 60 workers, mostly from impoverished areas in North West province, were treated as serfs.
"It's a very appalling situation," said Ermelo labour inspector Zweli Kubheka. "The employer makes unlawful deductions for food and rent. He has a shop on the farm, which allows the workers to buy on credit and in the end some take only 14c home."
He said the workers were paid after three months when they went to visit home.
He added that pigs roamed around the workers' compound, where conditions were so cramped that each room had 12 beds accommodating men, women and children with no privacy.
"Compliance with any labour laws and regulations on that farm is zero," said Kubheka.
Burhmann, who is otherwise known for declaring a fight against land and agriculture minister Thoko Didiza on the right of labourers to be buried on farms, failed to return messages left at his farm's office on Friday and again on Monday.
De Emigratie worker, Ezekiel Kolobi, said the workers were paid about R400 a month when he started working there in 2001.
Things went wrong in 2002, he said, when the national labour department started taking initiatives to introduce the minimum wage for agricultural workers. Labour minister Membathisi Mdladlana has set the minimum wager at R650 a month since March this year.
"He told us he's changing because the law was also changing. Our foremen said they were scared to speak to him," Kolobi said.
"Everything here is like hell. We're cramped. Our houses are infested with lice and we share the yard outside with pigs that stay next to our houses for left over food," he said.
Kubheka said that inspectors were helping the workers recover the money lost due to illegal deductions, and they've all decided to leave the farm after 15 were dismissed on Wednesday.
"Each worker is going to get about R1 800, and we're going to advise them to take the case to the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA)," Kubheka said.
Burhmann will however go down in history as a man whose efforts to take advantage of loopholes in land legislation forced Minister Didiza to amend it.
Burhmann, in cahoots with the Transvaal Agricultural Union (Tau), refused to allow the burial of his 31-year-old worker on his farm about four years ago.
The case went as far as the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein and he still won because the Extension of Security of Tenure Act was silent on burial of farm labourers.
Didiza then decided to amend the act in 2001 to give labourers rights to be buried on farms if they worked and stayed there.
An Amersfoort farmer, also in Mpumalanga, has recently failed in his attempt to challenge the new amendment. - African Eye News Service