Cape Town - Women on Farm’s Project (WoFP) has called on the public to place their support behind a recently started petition, part of a years-long campaign demanding the South African government ban the use of highly hazardous pesticides.
The petition to Minister of Agriculture, John Steenhuisen, calls for an end to what they referred to as “double stands”, and for the pesticides already banned in Europe, to be banned in South Africa.
In 2019, WoFP launched its Double Standards Pesticides Campaign, demanding the South African government ban 67 Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) already banned in the European Union (EU).
While banned for use in their own countries, the EU continues to produce and export many HHPs to South Africa, placing the lives and livelihoods of farm workers and their families at great and sometimes fatal risk.
In 2022, the Department of Agriculture announced its plans to ban certain HHPs by June 1, 2024.
“However, the most dangerous of these pesticides have still not been banned and are still widely used on commercial farms, causing respiratory problems, skin irritations, genetic mutations, cancer, damage to the reproductive system, and even death, in exposed groups like farm workers and dwellers,” the petition read.
WoFP campaigns coordinator, Kara Mackay, urged the minister to convene an urgent meeting with farmworkers to hear directly from them of the conditions in which they are made to work in and the effects of the pesticides on their health.
“He is supposed to talk to all stakeholders but he has not spoken to the agricultural farmworkers who are the backbone of the agricultural sector,” Mackay said.
Mackay said farmers should provide the basic minimum requirements of access to water and ablution facilities, as well as personal protective equipment, training and medical tests.
The Department of Labour has also been urged to inspect farms to ensure compliance.
A start would be to ban Terbufos, Mackay said, which has been linked to deaths and hospitalisations of persons after having consumed goods bought from spaza shops.
WoFP is working with the South African People’s Pesticide Tribunal, a collection of farmworker organisations and trade unions, to place pressure on the government to ban all HHPs, starting with Terbufos which use is legally restricted to the agricultural sector.
Meanwhile, the Department of Agriculture recently announced that it would be conducting inspections at all five registered manufacturers of Terbufos. This was to assess whether markers are put onto locally produced products to distinguish between illegally imported and locally produced chemicals.
This was in response to the deaths of at least 22 people, including several children, and many others hospitalised due to chemical poisoning from food.
Find the petition online at awethu. amandla.mobi/petitions/end-the-double-standards-ban-deadly-pesticides-already-banned-in-europe
Cape Argus