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A non-complying Limpopo farm has been slapped with R 28 million contravention notice for failing to comply with several labour legislations on Wednesday, “albeit several warnings by the Inspectorate,” Department of Labour said.

Montina farm, which owns over twenty farms in the province and employs just over two thousand people, failed to pay minimum wages as per the Sectoral Determination, failed to pay employees’ leave and had unauthorised deductions from them, between 2010 and 2011.

Phaswane Tladi, Deputy Director in the department said “the compliance must be adhered to in twenty one days and failure to do this will prompt us to take the matter to labour court to make the compliance order an order of the court.”

Tladi said “we applied for variation because the farm owner provides food and accommodation freely, while it has been discovered that this is not provided on a consistent and regular basis as a condition of employment.

The accommodation also does not meet the requirement as set out in the Sectoral Determination 13 of Farm Workers Sector.”

Peet van Niekerk, a Human Resource Manager, who took the compliance order on behalf of the farm, said “we welcome the findings by the department and the farm’s management will be notified of this and due actions will be taken to remedy the situation.”

Tladi said “the amount does not include the non-contribution towards Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF) and Compensation of Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act (COIDA) which stand at over R 1 million respectively.

We will still have to look at aspects of Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and after our observations, make further recommendations in this respect.”

Tladi urged the farm to start complying with legislations to avoid mounted complications as this would be difficult to come out of as time goes on.