By Bongani Hans

A R7-million agricultural project aimed at alleviating poverty in a rural area of Mthatha has been completed and is ready to take off.

The Mthatha Airport Agricultural Service (Maas) is a pilot project aimed at creating job opportunities in the rural areas under the King Sabatha Dalindyebo (KSD) Municipality.

For now the project, the brain child of a private company, NSM Network Services, enjoys support from the Mthatha Airport, the Department of Agriculture and Johannesburg-based Kagiso Trust.

The project, which specialises in producing vegetables of all kinds, is aimed at helping members of the Ncise community to move out of poverty and pocket 50% of the profit when the project starts trading its products to a number of huge supermarkets which the company has earmarked.

“The Maas is a pilot project, and once it is successful we will spread it all over the KSD and even to the OR Tambo district,” said Maas managing director Peter Moahloli. Chief of the Ncise community, Gobizizwe Makhawula, said the project was a compensation for community members who were mostly evicted from their land in 1976 for the airport. He said since the eviction, they had been fighting for compensation.

“It is going to help a lot as most of my people are unemployed and they lack infrastructure to plough their land.”

The project occupies about 60ha of the Mthatha Airport land. The NSM Network Services initiated it in 2003 and contributed R1.4m .

Since it needed R7m to make it a success, which needed top of the range technology, the company approached the Department of Agriculture, which has a budget of R9.7m to support such projects in the OR Tambo District Municipality, to contribute another R1.4m on behalf of the Ncise community.

“We then approached the Kagiso Trust in Johannesburg to also give us a loan of R4.2m . The trust gave us the money, but with 10 percent of the loan it bought shares in the project,” said Moahloli. The money was spent buying more than 20 agricultural tunnels, six huge water tanks, water pumps and in building administration offices.

Suresh Goberdan, who is in charge of overseeing the day-to-day operation, said it is financially viable because with its technology it produces all kinds of vegetables throughout the year and is not affected by the change of seasons.

Chief director of agriculture in the OR Tambo district Sydney Masebeni said his department has financial specialists who are auditing the project before the department pays for the job, which has been completed.

“We do this in order to make sure that they use the money responsibly,” said Masebeni.

Source: Daily Dispatch