admin
SOUTH Africa’s citrus growers said implementing the European Union’s measures to prevent black-spot disease spreading to fruit from the economic bloc was expensive and will affect the local industry’s prospects.
Citrus from the country, which represents about a third of the EU’s imports, will be subject to more stringent checks such as recording chemical treatments, registering packing houses and inspections at orchards, the European Commission, the EU’s administrative arm, said in a statement on its website yesterday. South African authorities will have to test a sample of 600 of each type of fruit for every 30 metric tons earmarked for exports, the commission said.
The industry has “gone to great lengths and excessive cost to demonstrate” its commitment to the EU’s position, the Citrus Growers’ Association of Southern Africa said in an e-mailed statement.
“This is simply not economically sustainable nor fair as South Africa has been singled out for special treatment by the EU in this regard.”
The industry’s “long-term prognosis” is “in the balance,” it said.
While black spot is a fungal disease that results in leaf-spotting and fruit blemishes, it isn’t harmful to humans. The fungus can survive transport and storage and could establish itself in EU areas that produce citrus, the European Food Safety Authority has said.
The EU intercepted 35 shipments from South Africa last year that contained black-spot disease, Europhyt data shows.
While the EU’s decision doesn’t legislate automatic bans after a set number of interceptions, it leaves room for “additional measures” to be imposed after five incidents of black-spot disease are found, the association said.
The “science that underlies” the risk should be resolved “once and for all,” it said. Senzeni Zokwana, who became South Africa’s agriculture minister two days ago, should “prioritise the swift and amicable resolution of the citrus black spot dispute with the European Union,” the association said.
Meanwhile, more than 5,000 South African sugar industry workers downed tools in a country already battling rampant strikes in the mining sector.
A wage strike in South Africa’s sugar industry has brought production to a standstill for the first time since 1997.
Over 5,500 workers from three unions “embarked on a protected strike” on Tuesday following a breakdown in discussions, producer Tongaat Hulett said in a statement.
“Operations at Tongaat Hulett’s South African Sugar business unit have stopped,” it added without giving numbers.
The stoppages were industry-wide and not limited to the firm, it said.
Earlier, the Food and Allied Workers Union (FAWU) said over 5,500 members of the three groups would stop work in the sugar milling and refining sectors.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Katishi Masemola, FAWU’s general secretary, said the union had not given employers a deadline.
“We will write them a letter later today and ask them to come to the negotiation table.” he said.
They are demanding a 10.5 percent wage increase, a 40-hour workweek, benefits and permanent employment for contract workers, according to FAWU.
Tongaat Hulett has offered 8.5 percent against the workers’ demands for 10.5 percent, according to Sapa news agency.
The firm produced 634,000 tonnes of sugar in the 2013-2014 season – 27 percent of South Africa’s total production.
The industrial action comes a few months shy of South Africa’s traditional “strike season” around the middle of the year, when unions down tools to bargain for higher salaries.
It is also the first time the industry has come to a standstill in 17 years. In 1997, the strike lasted 10 days.
Meanwhile, official data showed Tuesday the country’s economy shrunk by 0.6 percent in the first quarter of the year. The fall in productivity was largely due to a huge loss of output in the mining industry, which decreased by almost 25 percent. — Businessweek.com-Al Jazeera.
Online Reporter