The recent violent strike by citrus workers in the Eastern Cape could have cost the industry as much as R50m.
That's according to Hannes de Waal, the chairperson of the Citrus Producers’ Forum in the Sunday's River Valley.
He told Farmer's Weekly that the civil unrest had a disastrous effect on citrus growers in the area.
De Waal said vast quantities of fruit that was supposed to be on the retail market last week were lost and varieties that reached the peak harvest period were left in the orchards.
“We are still assessing the damage but we can safely assume that it would be more than the initial R50 million estimates,” he told Farmers Weekly.
The unrest over the past two weeks resulted in damage to some infrastructure and several arrests were made, leading to the intervention of Eastern Cape Rural Development and Agrarian Reform MEC, Xolile Nqqata.
Agri Eastern Cape president Doug Stern told the online publication that the unfortunate series of events in the valley was driven by the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco), which seemingly wanted to achieve political gain from it.
According to him, Sanco had nothing to do with labour and the issues around it.
