Daily Sun (July 11 2013) - THEY were told they were going to Cape Town to get well-paid jobs as engineers, builders and technicians. Instead, 110 jobless men from Mpumalanga found themselves dumped at a KZN fruit farm and told to pick grapefruit. THERE WAS NO PLACE TO SLEEP AND THEY HAD TO EAT PIG FOOD! It was all too much for the desperate jobseekers, who had been driven there by taxi. Some of them even tried to walk back to Mpumalanga!
They are angry with the woman who recruited them - labour broker Cynthia Magagula - whom they accuse of telling them a string of lies. But they have no money to pay for transport home. After the intervention of Daily Sun, who met the workers walking on the R66 and took them to the Department of Labour in Ulundi, Cynthia promised to fetch the men and take them back home. But by late yesterday the workers were still waiting at Melmoth Police Station.
The group told Daily Sun they first met Cynthia in Mpumalanga when she drove from township to township recruiting people "to work in Cape Town". The word spread and many wanted to join. But the broker said there were no forms to fill in. Some were allegedly told they were to be engineers building bridges, others were told that they would be cellphone technicians for cellphone giant, Vodacom, while others were told they would be making Tropica juice.
But when they got to KZN in five Quantum taxis at dawn last Thursday, only a grapefruit farm was waiting for them in the thorny bushes near Empangeni. They were told they would be picking grapefruit and paid 88c per bag. One of the men, Fanekie Zulu (30) said: "When we asked the broker, Cynthia Magagula, why she had lied to us, she had no answer. She left us here at the farm. "We were made to sleep in a warehouse with other workers. We were given rotten pig food to eat. It made some of us sick," said Zulu, adding that they only found out on Monday night that the farm was not in Cape Town.
On Tuesday, 60 out of the 110 men decided to walk back home on foot and were met by the SunTeam at Ndundulu after they had already walked 10km from the farm. They were singing sad songs and carrying their big bags and sleeping blankets on their heads and shoulders. "In the morning we told the farm owner and he said we were domkops and we did not make sense. How could we be engineers and technicians in a harvesting field?" Another worker, Dalton Sihlangu, said he got sick after eating the food.
"The money we earned in the few days at the farm couldn't pay for transport." The farm owner, who introduced himself as Paul, said: "These people were hired by Cynthia to work for me. I cannot do anything if they leave, they are free to go if they do not want to work." At first Cynthia hung up on Daily Sun. But after we had taken the workers to Ulundi, she promised us and labour officials that she would fetch the workers and take them back home yesterday.
Department of Labour General Manager Abey Rasepae said it was hard to say which part of the labour law had been contravened, as the workers had signed no contract.
"It is very difficult to challenge a verbal agreement. What we have to ensure now is that they are safely kept at a police station and to see whether their salaries are paid, as their broker promised," he said.
Cosatu spokesman Norman Mampane said the incident is a case of what he called human trafficking, which the federation wants scrapped. He said labour brokers always lie to job seekers, raise expectations and take advantage of the vulnerable. "That's why we want labour broking banned in this country. We regard this practice as a form of modern slavery. "We will continue to campaign against it because they are exploiting workers," said Mampane.
See the Daily Sun mobi site for more on this and other stories....
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Issued through the Politicsweb iService
