GroundUp: The grim life of a Philippi farm worker By Barbara Maregele for GroundUp
Fransina Sauls has been living and working on the Bock family farm in the Philippi Horticultural Area in Cape Town for nearly a decade. The building she and her family shares with several other families is falling apart. But the Bock family say the can do nothing; they are battling just to keep their father’s vegetable and pig farm going.
Crystalline said their living conditions were deteriorating, but she was unemployed and had nowhere else to go. Sauls told GroundUp she earned R300 per week and battled to make ends meet after deductions from her weekly wages for electricity, water and UIF. She moved to Cape Town from Riviersonderend nearly two decades ago in search of work and better opportunities for her children.
He said many workers in the area were not being paid the minimum wage; many farm dwellers did not have identity documents, and growing unemployment in the community often meant an increase in crime and drug and alcohol abuse.These people have been forgotten and neglected by government and organisations who are meant to fight for farmworkers’ rights. No one has come onto these farms to offer assistance,” he said.
She said it was hard to maintain the building Sauls lives in because, over the years, so many other people had moved onto the property. “There are about 30 people living there and we have no control over that. We can’t get them out. We haven’t got room to move our farm workers to this side either,” she said.They don’t have to live there. There are a lot of opportunities to go and apply for housing … We really try to do what we can. You’ve seen what it looks like there.
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