The Industrial Relations Court in Blantyre has ordered the Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc) to pay compensation to its 3282 former employees for unfair dismissal.
These are the employees that were fired in January 2022 following the order from then Minister of Agriculture, Lobin Lowe.
According to Nation Online, the court will later make an assessment of how much the former Admarc employees will get.
On September 1, 2022, former Agriculture Minister Lowe closed Admarc due to what he described as high levels of corruption, theft and professional negligence.
ADMAR was formed in Malawi in 1971 as a government-owned corporation or parastatal to promote the Malawian economy by increasing the volume and quality of its agricultural exports, to develop new foreign markets for the consumption of Malawian agricultural produce and to support Malawi’s farmers.
It was the successor of a number of separate marketing boards of the colonial-era and early post-colonial times, whose functions were as much about controlling African smallholders or generating government revenues as in promoting agricultural development.
