Why not prop up our own poultry industry?

DAVID Wolpert (Business Report, January 12) once again employs tired rhetoric to attack the local poultry industry, no doubt to protect his Association of Meat Importers and Exporters’ (AMIE) profiteering at the expense of jobs in the sector.

The fact is that local poultry producers are internationally competitive on a whole chicken basis and would prefer nothing more than to export breast meat to Europe free of duty.

Will Wolpert and his association therefore put their money where their mouth is and provide some funding and personnel out of the hundreds of millions they make every year so that, together, we can assist Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries establish the structures and systems to enable export to take place?

This action would demonstrate a commitment beyond the clichéd sound bites passed off as fact and put real substance into the “exporters’ “part of AMIE’s name. The real truth is that Wolpert has never approached us to assist in this matter. What he has done though is ask for help in managing rogue importers, who under-declare imported chicken to avoid tariffs to Sars, to protect his profits.

Far from an innocuous 14 percent, chicken imports cost the South A frican economy an astronomical R7 billion per year.

Jobs are therefore being created abroad, while we lose thousands at home, closing operations, and missing the aim of being a food-secure nation.

Simply put, unlike oil for example, we do not have to import chicken; we can be self-sufficient and easily create another 20 000 jobs. ARTHINUS STANDER CEO COUNTRY BIRD HOLDINGS CHAIRMAN – BROILER ORGANISATION, SOUTH AFRICAN POULTRY ASSOCIATION

Who actually pockets the electricity payments?

As a British citizen living and working in South Africa for the past 9 years or so, I fail to understand the problem as regards four provinces (Free State, North West, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape) owing Eskom the grand sum of R10.2 billion, which is rather a lot of money.

My belief is that the vast majority of consumers of electrical power in those municipalities religiously pay their bills each month and that this money goes into the coffers of the respective municipality.

If the former do not pay then I assume, in the interest of fairness and communal good, that the municipality would cut off their power supply.

If these municipalities are now unable to pay the Eskom bill, where exactly is this nudging on R10.2bn? GEOFF CONNOR VIA E-MAIL