Fishing firm shareholders’ complaints to be probed
AGRICULTURE, Forestry and Fisheries Deputy Minister Bheki Cele vowed yesterday to investigate why former shareholders of the defunct Siyaphambili Fishing Cooperative did not receive a cent when a Port Elizabeth company it owned shares in was sold off.
Cele was in Port Elizabeth to meet 196 fishermen and processors, who told him they owned shares in the cooperative through a trust formed in 1996.
The cooperative was a government-sponsored initiative meant to uplift the lives of those in the city earning a living from the sea.
The cooperative first owned shares in Siyaphambili, but this business was sold to the Eyethu Fishing Company in 1997.
The cooperative was given shares worth 7% in the Eyethu Fishing Company when it bought out Siyaphambili.
The shareholders included the 22 small-scale fishermen and processors who locked themselves in a department boardroom in Richmond Hill for four days last week.
They left on Saturday when Cele arrived in the city to address them at the weekend.
The fishermen and processors told Cele that Siyaphambili, under the chairmanship of businessman Stephen Dondolo, had been sold to Eyethu for R3.9-million.
Dondolo, who is the chairman of Eyethu, said the matter had been ongoing for years.
“They formed a trust and applied for fishing quotas, but in terms of the trust document any person who left [the company where the shares were invested] immediately ceased to be a beneficiary of the trust,” he said.
In 2004, the 196 shareholders lost their jobs with Eyethu when they were retrenched. They claim they were not paid out for the shares.
He said the group had also complained to the board of Eyethu, but it stood by stipulations in the trust documents.
He will meet Cele to give him his side of the story.
Cele told the fishermen and processors that department officials would investigate.
“Somebody took a wrong decision on your behalf and we need to get to the dark side.”
Cele also promised to investigate why some people had received share certificates and others not, and who had been behind the deal.
Shareholder Richard Velaphi said they had never benefited from the cooperative before or after it was sold.
“During a meeting with shareholders, Dondolo informed us the company had made a profit of R14-million, but we did not get anything,” he said.
Another shareholder, Burton Andrews, said: “I am satisfied with the outcome of the meeting. People are happy.”