Biggest UK food chain posts record profits, 'but fruit pickers still suffer in poverty'.(News)(Financial report)

BYLINE: AMANDEEP PARMAR

FRUIT farm workers in the Western Cape are barely surviving while record profits are posted by multinational companies that have pledged to ensure their suppliers pay decent wages, according to campaigners against poverty.

Many labourers, most of them women, are paid the legislated minimum wage of R1 231 a month picking deciduous fruit for foreign retailers. They say the wage is barely enough to feed themselves or their families.

This is despite Britain's Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), in which members agree to ensure suppliers pay a "living wage" to workers far down the supply chain.

Kitty de Kock, a single …