City Press writes about the ‘death’ of Hammarsdale, a KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) town, where the effect of last Monday’s retrenchment of more than 1,000 workers at Rainbow Chickens (now RCL Foods) is already apparent.  

Another 300 staff whose jobs were cut have been redeployed to other operations in other provinces.  “This is already having a huge impact on business,” says Farook Kadodia, the owner of a supermarket that has been serving Rainbow workers for 20 years.  The latest round of retrenchments, caused by the R1m-a-day losses the chicken producer has sustained – as a result of drought-driven maize price hikes and competition with cheaper chicken dumped from abroad – will have an effect far beyond them and their families.  In the 1970s and 1980s, Hammarsdale was KZN’s industrial and textile hub.  “The town has been hit hard by the closure of the textile sector here and by three sets of retrenchments at Rainbow.  Every time the area seems to be stabilising, we get hit again,” Kadodia said.  Now, with the loss of 1,000 pay packets, matters are going to get much worse.  RCL says more lay-offs may follow.

• Read this report by Paddy Harper in full at City Press

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