No money for food: ex-worker

TWENTY-YEAR-OLD Siphesihle Mkhize, of Hammarsdale, is one of the 590 temporary workers let go at the end of January. Mkhize worked at the Rainbow Chicken P2 farm in Hammarsdale.

He was the sole breadwinner in a family of seven.

He said he lived with his aunt and five siblings who were all unemployed.

The loss of his job had left the family struggling to make ends meet and surviving on the little he had managed to save.

He worked as a casual employee at Rainbow Chicken since last April,

“There’s no income at all. We didn’t get any compensation; instead they promised to fund us with R10 000 to study a short course of our choice,” said Mkhize.

He said casual workers who had worked for less than a year had not received a cent, while those casual workers employed for longer than a year received less than R1 000, and in some cases less than R500.

Mkhize said the R10 000 to study had not been given to all casual workers.

Some of them had been working as casuals for as long as 20 years.

“If you visited me now, you would leave without being offered anything to eat; that’s how dire the situation is right now. We can’t even afford groceries like we did before,” Mkhize said.

He said he did not know how his family would survive when his savings ran out as he was struggling to find another job.