Magwa Tea Estate has been officially relocated to the Department of Rural Development and Agrarian Reform and will undergo a major overhaul in its operations following the introduction of a new Interim Board.
Announcing the decision taken by the Cabinet to put the Estate under the department’s auspices at the Estate on Wednesday, MEC Zoleka Capa received applause from the workers from Magwa as well as community members from neighboring villages that are also set to benefit from the R42 million financial boast for the Pondoland area.
The MEC said the money was not meant for Magwa only but for neighboring villages, including the revival of Lambasi Dairy and the Mkhabathi agricultural project.
The Cabinet decided to allocate the shares owned by Eastern Cape Development Corporation (ECDC) to the department through its parastatal; Uvimba Bank and the MEC expressed joy that the Estate would be controlled by the Department through a board appointed by her.
The MEC said the management of the estate has been suspended with full pay “to create space for a comprehensive forensic investigation that will determine what went wrong at this once thriving economic hub of the Pondoland and the province.”
“We will leave nothing lying about and we’ll never let Magwa die,” she vowed.
She alluded to some of the challenges faces Magwa including the thorny issue of wage disputes, saying the Interim Board led by the department’s General Manager for Entrepreneur Development Leon Coetzee will look at “why workers strike yearly.”
“The workers’ rights and conditions of employment should be clarified. We need to know who gets paid what and what the benefits of each individual including the management are. Workers should be paid market-related wages,” she added.
Pledging to ensure “transparency” in the running of the Estate where all stakeholders participating in critical management issues including the budget, the MEC acknowledged that the department “had no knowledge about the happenings at Magwa and the accountability of the money transferred to the Estate was shoddy.”
The MEC said the scheme will be revived through a new approach working together with the National Department of Rural Development and Land Reform to ensure it provides job opportunities and increase the economy.
She said the Interim Board, which also consists two ECDC officials who have worked with Magwa, will have to come-up with a turn-around strategy will also look at the standard of living, skills development, revival of sports, arts and cultural activities as well as tourism.
A Memorandum of Understanding with the Construction-Education and Training Authority (CETA) is in place to help the youth of Magwa, which has been engaged in child labour in the Estate.
Provincial Organiser of Fawu Mbalisi Tonga said the labour union “thanked the department for what has already been done,” alluding to the fact that solar electrify has been installed and was working is some blocks at the Estate.
Turning to department’s intervention, he said the union was “satisfied” with the approach the MEC was bring and they hoped “never again should we go back to the worries where workers are not paid for months.”
To a loud applause, he urged the workers to go back to work on Monday.
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