Imo State-owned multibillion Naira palm producing company, Adapalm Nigeria Limited, has been shut down by workers, over the non-payment of the salary arrears owed them by the management.
A staff of the company, Mr. Chibuzor Anokuru, told our correspondent that rather than settling their salary arrears and other financial issues, the state government had been busy redeploying workers of the company to the state Ministry of Agriculture, claiming that they had become incapacitated and unproductive.
Anokuru also alleged that the owners of the land on which the company was sited had also been threatening to retrieve their property from the state government because the 3,110-hectares of land acquired from them was not paid for and none of the indigenes of the community had been employed in the company.
He disclosed that the land owners were now poised to retrieve it from the state government, if nothing was done to honour the agreement reached with the past administrations. “The land owners have said that they have no other option than to take over the land since government has been using the place without bringing any development to the entire area and can hardly pay long existing agreed royalties to the host communities,” Anokuru said.
He accused the government of being insincere in handling matters affecting the company, adding that the location of the factory lacked good roads, electricity while the environment remained unhealthy.
Anokuru added that the road leading to Adapalm premises had become unmotorable, despite the millions of Naira generated into the coffers of the state government by the company.
While blaming the state government for its failure to compensate the land owners for the acquisition of such huge expanse of land, he explained that the workers of the company, who had been working tirelessly to improve the state’s Internally Generated Revenue had nothing to show in terms of improved welfare.
He frowned at the deplorable state of the road, noting that it was better for the Rochas Okorocha administration to urgently look into the problems of the company before things would get out of hands.
