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Sunday Tribune reports that SA Guild of Actors (SAGA) is looking into a case of gross exploitation after receiving complaints from numerous extras on the set of the second season of “Shaka Ilembe”.
According to SAGA chairman Jack Devnarain, since the end of April, more than a hundred individuals were brought at their own cost to Joburg from KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga to work on the second season of the popular production. Devnarain reported further: “Last Wednesday (22 May), I went out to one of the houses in Kempton Park, where more than 30 people were staying. There was a particular extra, a 55-year-old woman, who told us that they had no food, so we took food to her. She was terrified to speak to us. She said that the agent is there and watching her and she is afraid of what is going to happen if she’s seen talking to us.” Later that night, Devnarain received a call from the woman, saying that she had been kicked out of the accommodation and everyone was being put into taxis and taken to an undisclosed location in Tembisa, but she was not among them. “She was fired and she spent the night outside in a veld,” said Devnarain. She revealed that there are other houses and an entire tented camp in Cosmo City, which was built in a open veld. After the message was shared on social media, well over a hundred people came forward. “It was astounding to me that you have well over a hundred people being housed in different places and it seemed ridiculous to me that the production company itself, Bomb Production, apparently had no knowledge of the conditions they were being kept in,” said Devnarain. Meanwhile, Bomb Productions is investigating the matter. It said: “Our investigation found people had paid the casting agency for accommodation but were living in what we deemed an unsafe and undignified makeshift camp-site. Bomb management acted swiftly, demanding Becky Casting address the worrying situation and disband, we also informed the local authorities.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Alyssia Birjalal at Sunday Tribune
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