Dear Portfolio Committee on Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development,

I am Lerato Modise In Free State. I representing 2023 First Intake of Dunnottar Millitary Base.We Have Issue In Free State regarding our practicals we did not finish our practicals.

We are writing to you as poultry production group from free state first intake 2023, after we left from military base Dunnotar 14/july/2023 we went to South west tvet college George tabor on 02/October/2023 , and did theory of poultry production for period of 3 months in January we went back to the college to wait for placement for practicals so we then left to do our practicals in Limpopo Tzaneen and the date of departure was 17/February/2024, on our contracts with college was to be on practical for period of 6 months and our contract to end on 30/june/2024, so on that note we plead department to review our contracts with Narysec our duration on the program and the period of the theory and practicals part.

As we arrived in Limpopo we were told poultry production group will start to work on the first Monday that week, mentor handed out contracts which in include the rent and duties to be done at the farm, our contract we were to work a farm work for a period of a month before doing our actual practicals, we as poultry production and plant production groups negotiated the rent which was R1500.00 R900.00 for rent and R600 for catering, our mento agreed to reduce it to R1100.00 R500.00 for rent and catering stayed the same, on our arrival mentor agreed to us to pay only for catering excluding rent for that month then canceling the rent for month of May but that was later informed on our stay, the living environment on our room was to share the space 4 of us per each room and the room we were provided wth 4 beds nd 4mattress and toilet and shower in the room.

Monday at dutie we went to inspect the chicken coops and made arrangements to embetter the environment of chicken coops for arrival of chicken then we started to work on the farm for period of the month, after a month we asked the mentor when are going to do our practicals but the mentor told us they is no money and equipment to work on our site of poultry production and promised us to take us on near by farms to do our practicals but it didn't happen we were convinced to still work on the mentor farm for another month doing the labour and preparing to plant tomatoes, we started to raise concerns to the mentor and our coordinators but mentor ignored us, we then got advice from our coordinator that not to work on the farm unless it's something related to the poultry production work, but to attend assembly and sign for the day's so on the Humans rights day our coordinators along side with south west tvt college and African global skills agent came to visit us and had a meeting with our mentor for the first time since we came to NTL barake farm, after their meeting our coordinators and other parties came to us to give us a chance to raise our concerns, what we talked about was the Scientology issue then dealt with it then the issue of our contract with the college so we were told that the contract will end on the 31/May/2024 it was a really serious issue since we knew we signed a contract saying the contract will end on the 30/june/2024, we were out powered and told even it wasn't right but then what can we do cause we got to comply, we then raised our concerns but our coordinators gave us two options to either we go back home and freeze the stipend or stay at the farm and wait for arrival of chicks we didn't make any decision regarding that but unfortunately we stayed there to give our mentor the benefit of the doubt, we were told we going to receive chicks and chickens on this two dates 24/March2024 and 02/april2024, fast forward we after Easter holidays we waiting but nothing till the 11/april2024 we received 20 chickens 10 for layers and 10 for broiler to be converted to free range.