Cape Town - Farmworkers’ representatives have expressed reservations about a proposal by Parliament to ensure the children of farmworkers are trained and enabled to manage farms in a bid to prevent generational entrapment as unskilled and cheap labourers.
Last week portfolio committee on employment and labour chairperson Lindelwa Dunjwa (ANC) said: “If the first generation of farm labourers was unskilled, it can’t be that their offspring must be trapped in this perpetual circle of an unskilled labour force.”
Dunjwa said the Department of Employment and Labour should consider introducing skills transfer levies in place in other sectors of our labour market as a means to entice farm owners to oblige.
She said the department should have career guidance campaigns that will expose the children of farmworkers to career paths that are part of the ecosystem of the industry and make bursaries available to those with academic potential, especially young girls.
“If achieved, this could encourage new young black entrants to take up and manage farming businesses. This is to better their lives and those of their families, as a means to mitigate the vicious cycle of want and victimhood,” Dunjwa said.
However, Commercial, Stevedoring, Agricultural and Allied Workers Union deputy general secretary Denico Dube said while the proposal was a good idea, they were not sure the Department of Employment and Labour could cope with implementation.
He said the department could not cope with the existing legislation’s workload and enforcements, so it would be difficult for them to implement the proposals.
“We are in favour of those proposals for the agricultural sector. We just believe that the government needs to take more serious actions in the transformation of agriculture,” Dube said.
In the Western Cape, the issue is already being tackled through the provincial agriculture department’s Elsenburg Agricultural Training Institute, which offers learnership programmes to children growing up on farms and farmworker children.
Department spokesperson Daniel Johnson said the institute had strong links with the agricultural industry and farming enterprises through its Work Integrated Learning programme, where registered students are placed on host farms to complete their practical training.