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SOUTH AFRICA: New programme to safeguard farm workers
13 Aug 2009 17:41:56 GMT
 Source: IRIN

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JOHANNESBURG, 13 August 2009 (IRIN) - Long treks, hard living and poor pay – the life of a migrant farm worker is not easy, and can even be downright risky. But a new programme aims to reduce that risk, at least when it comes to HIV.

The International Organisation for Migration and USAID on Thursday launched Ripfumelo ("believe" in xiTsonga), a project aimed at expanding access to HIV-related services among an estimated 20,000 migrant workers in South Africa's northern Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces, which attract agricultural labourers from within the country as well as neighbouring Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Mozambique.

The project's implementing partners have signed up to provide services such as mobile clinics, financial literacy classes, and peer education programmes on about 120 farms during the next three years, said Julia Hill-Mlati, the IOM Migration Health Officer.

The latest findings from IOM's long-running research into HIV among South Africa's migrant farm workers, released to coincide with the launch Ripfumelo, revealed that most of them thought knowing their HIV status was important, but less than half had gone for testing or could identify three modes of HIV transmission.

The 500 farm workers interviewed in the study also showed a low rate of condom usage, with about 70 percent indicating that they never used them.

A 2008 study by IOM found that nearly 29 percent of farm workers in Mpumalanga were HIV-positive - a prevalence rate almost 10 percent higher that the national average, according to UNAIDS.

High risk

The life of a migrant or seasonal farm worker came with its own complex brand of vulnerability to the virus that included poor living conditions, alcohol abuse and transactional sex, said Bafana Khumalo, a co-director of the Johannesburg-based gender NGO, Sonke Gender Justice, which has worked with farm workers in Hoedspruit, Mpumalanga, about 500km from Johannesburg.

"Migrants leave a family at home and come to an unknown environment – they almost have to make a second life," and often developed risky sexual relationships on the farms and then transferred this HIV risk to their families at home, said Khumalo.

"For instance, supervisors have enormous power - they have the power to employ people and to allocate housing. We found there was a lot of transactional sex going on ... [for] special favours on accommodation ... he basically could have his pick of women."

However Khumalo noted that new, stringent labour legislation and an increasing awareness among farmers about the economic costs of HIV have made them show greater interest in keeping their workers healthier for longer.

Jessica McKeown, a project manager at Agri-IQ, an agricultural NGO working with IOM on the Ripfumelo project, said farmers in the area where the NGO operated were now even willing to compensate workers for skipping work to attend peer-education classes.

IOM's Hill-Mlati said there were plans to expand Ripfumelo and perhaps link the project's HIV-related services with those in migrants' home communities, at least in South Africa. She admitted that linking HIV services across borders would be extremely difficult.

Adoption of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Policy Framework for Population Mobility and Communicable Diseases - still in draft form and awaiting approval from regional ministers - could lead to the introduction of health passports throughout the region.

Advocates promoting the concept maintain that the passports could help streamline the provision of antiretrovirals to mobile populations like migrant workers across southern African borders.

llg/kn/he

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