North West Premier, Bushy Maape, has assured poultry producer, Country Bird Holdings, that the provincial government is attending to the service delivery concerns raised by his company.
Maape said this following an eNCA report that Deputy Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Obed Bapela, said Country Bird Holdings (CBH), employing 1200 workers in Mahikeng alone, is planning to leave the province due to poor service delivery.
CBH, trades under the brand Supreme Chicken and employs more than 5000 people in different provinces and more than a 1 000 of them in Mahikeng
Maape met the management of Supreme Chicken at the company’s offices in Mahikeng, and said the two parties have come to some agreement.
“It has been confirmed that there has never been an intention to leave. We were prepared to engage in order to deal with issues. We all agreed that from now henceforth we address the issues. If there’s a problem we will contact the relevant government department and municipality,” Maape said.
“They [CBH] raised some issues related to water, which we are trying to resolve. They did raise issues about some community members coming to them to make demands. The police were here so we are addressing the issues,” said the premier.
Country Bird Holdings Chief Executive Officer, Brendon de Boer, said he hoped that the talks with the government would produce good results.
“We had a good discussion with the government about service delivery issues, which we have addressed. We have stressed the fact that we will continue to invest in the North West. We need a partnership with the government to make sure that we can address the issues that we have raised. Eskom, water, and we need the police to help us with the unrest and people making demands [for jobs]. We hope the partnership will be fruitful,” said de Boer.
Country Bird Holdings is the second largest employer in the North West province to threaten to relocate because of poor service delivery.
Clover SA based in Lichtenburg had earlier threatened to move from the area because of service delivery issues..
