After months of working through a bottleneck of over 2 000 applications, the department of employment and labour still needs to make UIF payments to snaking queues of seasonal farmworkers in De Doorns. Labour specialist say it’s not the first time this has happened, and that such problems are not unique to the Western Cape.
Vizicelo Boyce is among the affected workers and tells Food For Mzansi that he has been waiting for his UIF pay-out since April. This, after he had applied for a withdrawal in March. When he went to sign off on the money in April, he was informed by a departmental official that his application was still being processed and that a new date for collection would be communicated to him.
“We [have been] struggling for the past five months. We have no money to care for ourselves. When we enquire, we are sent from pillar to post. No one is giving us clear direction.
“We are told that our applications must go to Worcester and [that] the pay master comes from there. So, every time you talk to the department, there is a new story. We just need our money to survive,” he exclaims.
Boyce, who stays with his girlfriend Siyanda Buqwana, who is also a seasonal farmworker, says the situation has forced the two of them to rely on their parents to buy them food.
Buqwana has been waiting for her UIF payout since June. “When we enquire, we are told that our applications are still in boxes waiting to be processed. I have no hope.”
The couple is among “We are worried that, with the season about to start in October, we will not even get the money that we spent days sleeping at the labour offices for. We will be working [again] and not qualifying for it. We are frustrated at this moment,” Buqwana explains.
Not a once-off problem
Denile Samuel, labour rights programme coordinator at the Women on Farms Project (WFP), says they have engaged government for years to increase capacity at satellite offices as thousands of seasonal workers depend on it.
“The minister (Thulas Nxesi) was here last year and made a lot of promises of fixing the labour department, but nothing has happened.”
She are particularly concerned for breadwinners who rely on UIF money to keep going in the off-peak season, as well as single mothers who can be seen queuing for hours outside while comforting their children in the cold. To add insult to injury, they are often told to come back and the new season is now fast approaching.
Lebogang Sethusha, Agri SA’s labour and employment law specialist, adds that the problem is not unique to De Doorns but occurs in other provinces as well.
“I have received a few comments from our members in the Eastern Cape. It’s mostly the lack of labour centre or mobile services in rural areas where farmworkers are.”
As an example, she mentions Kirkwood in the Sundays River Valley where citrus pickers reportedly do not have a permanent office to go to, which makes it difficult for farmworkers to access UIF money.
Solution to long delays
According to the department of employment and labour in the Western Cape, there may be a permanent solution to ensure that seasonal farmworkers like Boyce and Bugwana do not experience the same delays going forward.
Spokesperson Mapula Tloubatla reckons that farmers should communicate their “end-of-season timelines” to the department as an early warning of UIF payment peaks.
“If that could be done, provincial rapid response teams [could visit] farms to assist with filling out applications, verification of declarations and getting all the documentation that is needed. This will cut traveling costs for farmworkers,” she says.
Giving an update on the pay-out delays to seasonal farmworkers in De Doorns, Tloubatla says that over and above the 2 000 applications that have been processed, approved and paid, there are still claims which have been rejected due to failed verifications of declarations and outstanding information.
“Most of the clients are coming to enquire about those aspects and the office is working around the clock to finalise those application.”
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