The Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (ADMARC) says it will fire 3,122 employees as part of its restructuring exercise.
Speaking with reporters on Monday at Parliament, Board Chairperson for ADMARC Kusamba Dzonzi said the state-owned company will reduce its workforce from 4,687 to 1565.
He said the workers expected to be fired are those who are unprofessional, are dormant and are not competent. According to Dzonzi, some of the workers do not know why they are working at ADMARC hence they need to be laid off.
He added that some of the workers are supposed to retire.
“ADMARC is run based on taxpayers’ money. But the situation has been that taxpayers have been paying employees who are not discharging their services, not bringing any revenue and not looking after the maize yet they are being paid by the taxpayers.
“So for how long will the taxpayer pay such employees. That’s why we have decided to restructure because some of these employees do not have skills,” he said.
On his part, Chairperson for Parliamentary Committee on Trade Simplex Chitchora Banda said one of the issues of concern that ADMARC brought up during the meeting was the lack of enough funding to operate the company which the committee agreed with them.
He then said that they are, however, concerned that people out there are suffering due to hunger when ADMARC has maize in its custody.
Banda asked government to allow ADMARC to sell the maize considering that ADMARC it is the only market that people depend on.
On Wednesday last week, Minister of Agriculture and Irrigation Development Robin Lowe announced the suspension of ADMARC services with immediate effect, including sending home over 4000 employees at the corporation, informing them not to come back to work, and that if they do, they would be considered as trespassing.
The minister said this is part of the plan that the Tonse Alliance government has come up with to turn around the loss making ADMARC into a viable entity.
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