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Masvingo – Zimbabwean farm workers in the Masvingo province say they have been working and living under appalling conditions ever since government seized land from white farmers about 15 years ago, a report says.
According to a research, some of the farm workers said they were underpaid and felt neglected, New Zimbabwe.com reported.
The workers also lamented over poor accommodation, saying they had no access to good houses, education and health facilities.
"Some workers work without protective clothing, not even safety shoes in the snake-infested sugarcane plantations. They will be removing sugarcane leaves using bare hands, without overalls," Dr Charlton Tsodzo, who carried out the research was quoted as saying.
The results of the research were revealed during a ZimRights national people’s dialogue on social-economic and cultural justice held in Masvingo recently.
Last week, the Southern Eye reported that most infrastructure on Zimbabwe's commercial farms had been vandalised or had not been repaired since their takeover by indigenous farmers.
The report said some workers were not paid and were staying at the farms because they didn’t have anywhere to go.
President Robert Mugabe and his Zanu-PF party launched the land reforms in 2000, taking over white-owned farms to resettle landless blacks.
Mugabe said at the time that the reforms were meant to correct colonial land ownership imbalances.
At least 4 000 white commercial farmers were evicted from their farms.
The land seizures were often violent, claiming the lives of several white farmers during clashes with veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s liberation struggle.
