Cape Argus reports that farmworkers’ representatives have expressed reservations about a proposal expressed in parliament designed to ensure the children of farmworkers were 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) stated: “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 (DEL) should consider introducing skills transfer levies in place in other sectors of the labour market as a means of enticing farm owners to oblige. She recommended that the department should have career guidance campaigns that would expose the children of farmworkers to career paths that were part of the ecosystem of the industry and make bursaries available to those with academic potential, especially young girls. 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 DEL 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. 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.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Mwangi Githahu at Cape Argus

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