Cape Town - A national minimum wage would be worthless unless it was enforced as some farmers are ignoring the sectoral determination of R105 a day, farmworkers have told MPs.
One of the workers, Jacques Botes, begged members of Parliament’s labour portfolio committee on Saturday to ensure that labour inspectors did their jobs and investigated which farmers were not adhering to the sectoral determination.
The committee has begun a tour of the provinces after holding public hearings at Parliament on proposals for a national minimum wage.
President Jacob Zuma pledged in his State of the Nation address in June that the “modalities” for implementing this would be investigated.
Farmworkers were invited to the second of these provincial hearings in Paarl, near Cape Town, on Saturday.
They complained that since the introduction of the revised minimum wage for farmworkers, their employers had begun to charge them for rent, transport, work clothes, and water and electricity, none of which they had paid for before.
There have also been reports of increasing evictions in the months since Minister of Land Reform and Rural Development Gugile Nkwinti proposed that farmers share ownership of their farms 50-50 with their workers.
Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa called last week for a moratorium on evictions.
Farmworker Vivian Vimba said she had asked a farm manager for medication for a headache and was told to “get it from Zuma”. When she complained to the owner, he told her the manager had been joking.
Gloria Songelwa, regional secretary of the Building and Allied Workers Union of SA, asked what the committee would be able to do if farmers took a similar line when a national minimum wage was introduced.
She said some were no longer paying UIF contributions or towards medical expenses.
The farmworkers said there should be a pension scheme, medical aid, fixed annual leave and overtime pay for them, among other things.
Sindehi Siyolo said he was being made to work with pesticides without being given protective clothing – a complaint echoed by others.
Labour committee chairwoman Lumka Yengeni said it was clear the money that farmworkers earned was not enough and that their toil was taking them nowhere.
Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, she said the committee hoped to complete its work on the minimum wage by June.
It expected to invite labour representatives to make comments, Yengeni said.
The committee’s work was in parallel to the process led by Ramaphosa at the National Economic Development and Labour Council. It did not conflict with it, Yengeni said.
When the committee had finished listening to interested parties it would consider their inputs and report to Parliament, which would advise Zuma of the outcome.
Political Bureau