Another bitter Christmas for Magwa Tea workers

WORKERS at Magwa Tea Farm will likely spend a third festive season cashless after it emerged they had gone for the whole year unpaid.

Workers at the tea farm claim they have not been paid a cent in the past 15 months.

Flora Soji, originally from Matatiele, said they now faced a bleak future.

“These non-payments started in September 2013,” she said, adding that the tea estates management had told workers there was no money to pay them.

“If nothing is done this year, we will have to spend a third Christmas day in dismay without proper food to provide to our families.

“My kid even dropped out of school because I do not have school fees money. It’s really hard. We are hopeful this will be resolved,” Soji said.

EFF provincial spokeswoman Yoliswa Yako said the party had called for urgent intervention.

“The Economic Freedom Fighters [EFF] calls upon Minister Senzeni Zokwana [Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries] to pay those workers with immediate effect as he had lied at the national parliament that people of Magwa are getting paid,” said Yako.

In a parliamentary response to questions asked by DA MP Annette Steyn, Zokwana said the plucking of tea had not started for the current tea production season due to lack of working capital.

“Payment of salaries … depended on availability of cash. The cost of production and overheads expenses have been exceeding cash revenues from tea sales and government grants have not been enough to make up the shortfall,” Zokwana explained.

There are 754 permanent employees at Magwa and provincial government has spent more than R74-million between the 2009-10 and 2014-15 financial years though its various agencies.

Provincial rural development spokesman Mvusiwekhaya Sicwetsha said the department had made a submission to cabinet this week about money needed to rescue Magwa.

“Our entity ECRDA [Eastern Cape Rural Development Agency] pays the intervention money on our behalf but that is not enough.

“We need the money to rescue the estate completely. We have paid all the money we had allocated in our budget for both estates,” Sicwetsha said.

Delivering the mid-term budget adjustments late yesterday, finance MEC Sakhumzi Somyo said R15-million would be allocated to Magwa in line with a Business Rescue Assessment (BRA). —