As people all over the country prepare to celebrate the festive season, residents in Mpumalanga’s Hammersdale are bracing for hard times.
Rainbow Chicken Limited Foods (RCL Foods) says it is cutting about 1,200 jobs at its poultry plants there, and could shed even more jobs in future due to cheap chicken imports from the US, Brazil and EU countries.
The looming jobs losses are the latest setback for Hammersdale and surrounding areas.
The industrial area had a big textile industry in the 60s, 70s and the 90s. But with democracy and the relaxation of trade barriers between SA and other countries the textile industry lost many jobs.
It is estimated that the Hammersdale industrial area lost more than 40,000 textile jobs from the mid-90s to 2002, mainly because of cheap imports from China. These job losses hit Mpumalanga township hard, leaving thousands of households without breadwinners.
RCL Foods became Hammersdale’s biggest employer with nearly 5,000 workers, but now it is laying off because of international competition.
The company says total chicken imports averaged 27,500 tons a month for the 12 months to June, a 43% increase on the previous year.
RCL Foods spokesman Stephen Heath said: "Tens of thousands of tons of surplus chicken are dumped in the South African market monthly, and the EU is one of the main sources of this meat."
Fawu provincial spokesman August Mbhele said on Monday that his union was working with the government and poultry producers to reduce job losses in the industry.
"The job loss will not only be felt at RCL Foods. Even smaller abattoirs and poultry farmers have indicated that they will be forced to close shop because the cost of running these entities is escalating and they are not recovering these costs because there are cheap imports dumped here from other countries.
"We are talking with the Department of Trade and Industry to intervene by convincing the Treasury to have a budget set aside to save jobs in this industry. So far it is not clear whether we will succeed.
"We are also pleading with government to limit the import of chicken from other countries. This is very sad because these job losses come just months after our government was coerced to accede to the importation of poultry from America as part of African Growth And Opportunity Act (Agoa)," Mbhele said.
Many people in Mpumalanga township, such as councillor Lucky Mngwengwe, say the government must intervene.
"Hammersdale was an industrial paradise, with jobs in the textile and poultry industry," said Mngwengwe. "Now it is a shadow of its former self.
"Textile firms were forced to close shop. We have 65%-70% unemployment in the area. People rely on government grants and old-age pensions. Many households eat meat only on grant or pension payout day.
"It is very sad. We buy foreign-made clothes and buy foreign-produced chicken instead of buying our own, which would sustain jobs. Government must intervene fast to save RCL Foods and other local jobs," Mngwengwe said.
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