Adamawa Workers Decry Non-payment Of 44 Months’Salaries

Over hundred workers of Adamawa state Agricultural Development and Investment Ltd.(AADIL) have appealed to Governor Muhammad Umaru Jibrilla to intervene by paying them their forty four months salaries arrears.

The AADIL staff said the last time they paid salaries was in September 2014, a situation they descried as unbearable.

The staff,who represented their protest letter to newsmen in Yola, said the last time they got paid was in September2014.

They observed that the company established by government in 2010 to support the transformation of agriculture in Adamawa by increasing per capital income of rural famers had so far trained over 85,000 farmers on modern farming techniques before suspending it activities in various Farming Skills Acquisition Centre’s (FSAC) across the state due to poor funding and nonpayment of salaries.

They noted that with the present commitment shown by President Buhari administration to agriculture, Adamawa Government which insisted in cueing into federal government agricultural drive could only succeed if organizations like AADIL was made fully functional through adequate funding and payment of staff salaries.

They listed grain crop production,livestock,fish farming,poultry production,vegetable production,irrigation/agronomy,tree crops and bee farming as areas needing urgent funding in the company and urged the state government to do something urgently about AADIL which has been grossly underfunded in the interest of the majority who are mostly rural farmers.

When contacted, the Managing Director of AADIL, Engr. Usman Aji, who is said to be the only one getting salary, simply said he would not comment.

Aji insisted that the company has a board chairman who said was in a better position to talk.