Personal message
Monkey Valley Resort
Although we are all well, our situation here for Monkey Valley Resort and our dedicated staff during this government CV-19 lockdown is becoming critical. With the advent of the government-imposed lock down on the 26th March, we are effectively prevented from operating our resort and restaurant business until level 1, in the unknowable future. The govt. advised that they would make provisions for supporting tourism, hospitality and their employees. To date they have done very little of anything promised.
According to the Government we do not qualify for BBBEE status, as we are family owned, which means that now they have unfairly decided that we do not qualify to receive any govt business aid or tourism’s special fund.
Despite our diligent payments for decades of the UIF (Unemployment Insurance Fund) contributions for our employees and the Government’s Dept. of Labour pledge to expedite the special lockdown UIF TER employee support payouts, only 13 out of 103 employees have received any funds. The reality for our staff is that the salary they received on the 26 March was the last real income. We split all the perishable food between the staff before lockdown. The lockdown was only meant to last 3 weeks. To date there have been no other payments, definitive answers or solutions offered by the Govt. to rectify this unacceptable situation.
As a consequence, we are extremely concerned about the wellbeing and the ability of our employees to survive what is rapidly becoming a more than desperate situation for them. Resulting from this, we have constantly applied our minds to find appropriate solutions to financially assist our employees. In spite of not being able to trade we have raised funds to make two payments of R500.00 to each employee. We are fully aware that these payments are totally inadequate for individuals/families to survive on.
The inability to trade and our commitment to our employees, despite no cash flow has required us to look at more effective ways to acquire funds to keep MVR afloat.
We would be truly grateful for your assistance to allow MVR to continue to deliver our unique hospitality and pay our friendly staff, no matter how small the contribution.