Cape Town - Women on Farms Project (WFP) is highlighting the precarious and exploitative nature of farmworker transportation.
WFP shared images on Facebook of overcrowded and unsheltered trucks, trailers and bakkies ideal for the transportation of goods but not persons.
The feminist rural development organisation located in Stellenbosch works to capacitate women who live and work on commercial farms to ensure that their rights are upheld and livelihoods protected.
WFP Labour Rights Programme Co-ordinator Denile Samuel said the inhumane way of transporting did not consider the health and safety of workers, which continued despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Transporting farmworkers in this barbaric way has been the norm for years, as if they are animals,” Samuel said.
“Labour brokers are the main culprits since workers have been outsourced to them. They provide transport to farmworkers in a cheap and unsafe way and make their money on the backs of poor and vulnerable workers.”
Samuel said there were laws in favour of workers, however they did not provide enough protection and were not enforced by traffic officials.
“According to the Road Traffic Act, workers should be transported safely and the act stipulates that the vehicle must be enclosed by proper sides to at least a height of 350 mm above the surface on which the people will be sitting.
“The National Land Transport Act stipulates the requirements to safeguard workers who are transported. Then again according to the act basically any vehicle could transport workers like trailers, a bakkie, a truck and a tractor.”
During harvest time, many unregistered labour brokers supplying workers to farmers are not registered with the Compensation Fund that protects workers in the case of an accident or injury.
The labour brokers who act as temporary employers are not registered as employers and do not register employees.
On January 27, 2022, a truck transporting approximately 80 farmworkers crashed near Paarl, leaving at least two people seriously injured.
In June of the same year, 35 farmworkers were injured when a truck overturned on the R45 between Klapmuts and Simondium near Groote Simonsvlei.
In 2021, three workers died when the driver of a truck transporting 57 female farmworkers lost control of the vehicle at Kannetvlei between Worcester and De Doorns.
Samuel said the law should eliminate vehicles such as trucks, trailers and bakkies, requiring that workers be transported in buses.
“We did not even touch on the sexual abuses that could take place while workers are standing close to one another. WFP rejects this way of transportation and urges the government to change the outdated laws to protect farmworkers and especially women farmworkers.”