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Poverty punishes SA workers

Johannesburg - Each day they rise early in the morning to walk, cycle or ride the long distance to work, yet they live in abject poverty.

They are South Africa's employed but desperately poor.

According to Statistics South Africa's (StatsSA) latest Labour Force Survey (LFS) they number as much as three million.

They are the country's least paid workers, many of whom earn far less than what is paid to the elderly and infirm in social grants.

Almost one and half million of them get paid R500 or less a month, the StatsSA numbers show. They live in shacks and dwellings without some of the most basic of amenities and spend chunks of their incomes on just getting to and from work.

They are part of South Africa's unfortunate half that lives in poverty, according to Global Insight, the international research agency.

'Greedy employers'

Gerhard Bijker, researcher at Global Insight estimates that just under three million households live on less than R1 000 a month.

Financial research group, Eighty20 recently found that half of the country's households survived on less than R20 a day.

These unfortunate South Africans have household incomes well below the University of South Africa's Bureau of Market Research's (BMR) poverty base line of R1 945 a month for an average family.

The poverty base line is a measure of the minimum living level.

SA Commercial, Catering and Allied Workers' Union general secretary Bones Skulu, blames the workers' desperate situation on greedy employers.

He says the sectors in which his union organises workers were notorious for exploitative tendencies.

'Workers are worse off today than in the past'

"Casualisation has brought misery to workers. Some of our members are worse off than those in the sweatshops of China," he said.

Skulu said casualisation had exacerbated the situation.

"Workers are worse off today than in the past. They have no guaranteed benefits and work for minimal hours and all this is done in the name of job creation," he said.

Skulu said the sectoral determinations of the department of labour for the sectors of the economy that pay pittances, have had minimal success.

"They set minimum standards and many employers are happy just to comply," he said.

No official poverty benchmark

The LFS numbers show that of the two million workers employed in the formal wholesale and retail trade sector, less than 20% have medical aid cover.

Although the LFS numbers are not a good measure of poverty as respondents generally tend to understate their income, the figures for the period up to March 2006, are in line with independent estimates.

"In the absence of a universally accepted method of calculating poverty, household expenditure can be used to provide an indication of inequality of wealth and serve as an indicator of poverty," says Professor Johan Martins of the BMR.

South Africa does not have an official poverty benchmark. The national treasury with StatsSA have appointed a team of experts to develop one, but this has been in the making for a while and little has come off it.

Treasury spokesperson Thoraya Pandy said the investigation into formulating an official poverty line was still work in progress.

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