Some OPN shareholders met the communal ostrich farmers on Tuesday to get more clarity on the pay dispute with the company and promised to take it up at the Friday meeting.

Saalmon Jacobs, Chief Executive Officer of Karas Communal Ostrich Farmers' Trust, said their fate was now in the hands of the shareholders they met on Tuesday.

The ostrich farmers claim no formal decision was taken by the OPN board not to pay them for the birds delivered.

On Monday last week, the farmers demonstrated at OPN premises, outside Keetmanshoop, after the company's Managing Director Frikkie Mouton told them they would not be paid for birds supplied to the company for slaughter.

OPN and the communal ostrich farmers from Berseba, Vaalgras and Khoixas have an agreement under which they buy the chicks and fodder from the company, raise them to slaughter age (12 months) and re-sell them to OPN.

Jacobs said the ostrich producers had asked that OPN pay them in full for the delivery of the ostriches until funding - which would be used to reduce their debts - was approved.

Alternatively, they asked for a proportion of the money from the slaughtered birds to go towards reducing their debt, with the rest being paid out to them.

Mouton wrote to the farmers on October 1 informing them that OPN shareholders had refused to pay them and would withhold the money until current debts were settled.

However, the communal farmers claim the topic was not even discussed by the Board.

Jacobs said the farmers stood by their call for Mouton's dismissal and a demand that Government investigate OPN's operations as the company was funded by money from the Government Institutions' Pension Fund (GIPF).

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