Workers now partly own farming company

About 300 workers on six farms in the Ceres and Worcester areas have been awarded a R14-million grant to buy a 40 percent shareholding in a company that owns four farms, as part of the department of Agriculture's land transformation programme.

Marion Jeffery, an external trustee of the Bokkeveld Employee Trust, said work on the project, the Timberlea-Bokkeveld Land Redistribution for Agricultural Development, had begun on September 4, 2006.

"Thirteen months later, the applicants presented their proposal and business plan to the district assessment committee of the department of Land Affairs in Worcester," Jeffery said.

On October 15, the department of Land Affairs approved the R14-million grant.