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Centre to help Zimbabweans find work in SA
Amy Musgrave, Business Day (SA)
August 22, 2006

http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/topstories.aspx?ID=BD4A254179

A RECRUITMENT centre to help Zimbabweans get jobs in SA and reduce the number of illegal immigrants in the country is to be opened at the Beitbridge border post on Friday.

Thousands of Zimbabweans have fled their homes for SA to escape the economic and political turmoil in that country.

Zimbabwe’s inflation of nearly 1000% is considered the highest in the world. About 200 Zimbabweans are deported from SA a week, but most are known to come back quickly thereafter.

Labour department spokesman Mokgadi Pela said the centre would help Zimbabweans seeking employment in SA with legal documents. Those applying to work in SA would be checked before receiving approval documents. They would be allowed to enter the country only after employers had gone to the centre to recruit them, he said.

Pela said the employers were expected to be mostly farmers.

The centre was suggested by the International Office for Migration and by Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana. Zimbabwean Labour Minister Nicholas Goche gave the go-ahead after site inspections in January this year.

Pela said illegal Zimbabweans deported from SA would be able to apply for work documents at the centre before being sent back to their country, where they would wait for government’s reply.

The objective of establishing the centre is to regularise the status of Zimbabwean farm workers employed in the border area.

It will ensure that those seeking employment in SA have not run away from the law in Zimbabwe and that those crossing the border have had thorough security checks so as not to pose a threat in SA.

The centre would also help in the repatriation of Zimbabwean migrants, Pela said.

Government also planned for the centre to provide medical assistance and food to the needy with the help of international donor organisations.

The authorities hope that the recruitment office will help curb cheap labour, the abuse of labour laws, and "rampant" crime. Thousands of Zimbabweans work on SA’s farms, especially in Limpopo.

Earlier this month, Human Rights Watch, an international rights watchdog, released a damning report saying Zimbabweans were not paid the minimum wage, were subject to unlawful deductions from their wages, and that some wages were calculated on productivity instead of the number of hours worked.

The report said undocumented foreign migrants in SA’s cities were paid less than South Africans for doing the same work. The organisation estimated that between 1,2-million and 3-million Zimbabweans were living in SA.

The centre, the first of its kind in Africa, will be manned by officials from SA, Zimbabwe and the International Office for Migration.

SA has a memorandum of understanding with Mozambique to build a similar centre and it plans to do the same with Lesotho and Botswana.

Congress of South African Trade Unions spokesman Patrick Craven said: "We hope the initiative will do something to stop the ruthless exploitation of immigrant workers and make sure that Zimbabwean workers enjoy the same rights and benefits as other workers."

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