Media Release
9 April 2020
Commercial farmers dice with the lives of workers
It is with grave sadness that CSAAWU has learnt of the fatal accident on the N1 earlier this week in which nine farm workers lost their lives.
The accident happened between De Doorns and Touwsriver when the workers were being transported on a truck to their place of work. It’s been confirmed that up to 28 farmworkers were being transported in the truck at the time.
The Commercial Stevedore Agricultural and Allied Workers Union (CSAAWU) has been vocal since the beginning of this pandemic that farmers should obey the legislation and regulations put in place by government. Yet we still find many farmers ignoring this.
Before the lockdown, CSAAWU had written to all employers where it has union members to request details of the measures put in place to ensure the health and safety of workers. It was only a few who responded. This left us very concerned, and in due time we received reports of violations and disregarding of safety protocols with respect to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The fatal accident this week on N1 is a true reflection of the careless attitude of both commercial farmers and government. The manner in which the workers were transported, on an overloaded truck, was a violation social distancing safety regulations. This is also not the first incident of its kind in which farm workers are killed while being transported on open trucks.
Some years back government actually promised that it will put in place legislation to ban the transport of farm workers in trucks. This promise has been one of the many empty promises made during the last 25 years.
CSAAWU has for years been at the forefront of monitoring the non-compliance of companies in the agricultural sector. We, with the Farm Workers Coalition, have been continuously putting pressure on government and industry bodies to ensure that these incidents should never occur. However, it seems our campaigns are taken more seriously by organizations abroad than by our own government in South Africa.
The fact that the farm owner, truck owner and truck driver (whether the same person or not) are not in jail, demonstrates the inconsistency in the application of the disaster regulations when it come to landlords and elite members of society.
We demand that the police immediately arrest the farm owner, and that he be criminally charged and prosecuted appropriately. We further demand that this farmer not appear in the local magistrate courts in the De Doorns, where experience has shown consistent bias by local magistrates towards elite members of society. Instead, we demand that a special court preside over this matter, and similar matters involving farm workers and farm owners.
