Cotton project empowers women
8 June 2004
The Labour Job Creation Trust, a body founded by South Africa's three trade union federations and employer bodies in 1998 to support job-creation projects, has given a R600 000 boost to a group of rural women farmers.
The project, the Moutse Cotton Umbrella in Denilton, Mpumalanga, will benefit over 130 women farmers. The money will be used to buy farming equipment, including two tractors, a ripper plough, a planter and a disc plough.
The project has already created 150 new jobs, and has begun producing cotton despite a severe drought in the region.
The Trust has identified the Moutse area as a "poverty pocket", but the women farmers hope the project will change the area's status.
The Labour Job Creation Trust, an initiative of the Presidential Jobs Summit of 1998, was established by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Federation of Unions in South Africa, the National Council of Trade Unions, and employer bodies, whose
members donated a day's wages and a day's profit respectively into a Job Creation Fund.
The Trust has so far raised R80-million through contributions from union members and non-members. It has received approximately 3 400 applications to the value of R4-billion, and has to date committed R57-million, disbursed R12-million, and in the process created an estimated 4 439 job opportunities.
The Moutse project will also receive professional assistance the Development Bank of Southern Africa, which manages the Trust's projects.
The Land Bank has committed itself to provide loans to individual qualifying farmers, while the Department of Agriculture will provide technical training and extension services to the farmers.
Source: Proudly South African
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