Sunday Times reports that the death knell was sounded last week for a major abattoir in the Free State with the loss of 79 jobs due to the usual litany of South African woes – load-shedding, water shortages and rickety municipal services.
Blokhuis Abattoir, owned by Midlands Meat, shut its doors on Friday. “The closure of the plant in Harrismith is due to economic reasons: market volatility, operational costs, load-shedding impact and local council infrastructure challenges,” its board indicated. According to the workers, the company retrenched 14 employees last year, saying the costs of bringing water to the plant and running a generator during load-shedding were unsustainable. An employee who worked at the abattoir since 2013 said: “After those retrenchments we thought [the job losses] were over. They came back at the beginning of May to tell us that the failure of the municipality to provide reliable water and the cost of running generators were giving the company big problems. A week later, the same bosses came to inform us the company would close on June 23.” Willem König of the Harrismith, Intabazwe & Tshiame Residents' Association said the loss of the business was bad news for the community. “It is a very sad day. There will be people who depend on those workers who will now have no food. In such tough economic conditions, you cannot let go of workers this way. We are a small town and we don’t have lots of employment opportunities.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Penwell Dlamini at Sunday Times (subscriber access only)
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