It never rains but pours for ex-Admarc employees

The past five months have been hell for a Thyolo-based woman (name withheld) who is among members of staff retrenched last year at the troubled Agricultural Development and Marketing Corporation (Admarc).

The single mother of two, who worked as a security guard since 2012, has told Weekend Nation that because she is jobless, she cannot afford to buy food, pay rentals and school fees for her child in secondary school and support her aged mother.

She said: “My son was due to sit for this year’s Malawi School Certificate of Education examinations but he won’t after he dropped out because I could not support his education. As I speak, I am also facing eviction for not paying rentals for four months. I am also not able to repay some loans I have been taking hoping I would settle it from my pension.”

The woman reveals that the saddest part is that potential employers are rejecting her for being a former employee of Admarc.

“Our curricula vitae are dented. Potential employers see us as thieves, corrupt and lazy people. Sadly, we saw the Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale telling Parliament that our pension funds were settled,” she said.

The woman is among 2 000 former Admarc employees who are yet to access their pension benefits.

We failed to speak to Admarc chief executive officer Dan Makata and Minister of Information Moses Kunkuyu as both of whom did not pick our phone calls and ignored our queries sent via WhatsApp. But Minister of Agriculture Sam Kawale said as a ministry they deal with policy issues while the issue at hand is an administrative hence Admarc management was better placed to respond.

In a WhatsApp response, Admarc spokesperson Agnes Ndovie promised to respond soon but did not do so by press time.

According to Leonard Mbulo lawyer for the ex-employees, over 3 200 former workers claimed their pension funds but as at now just over 1 000 were paid. He said their fund administrator Old Mutual is expected to pay them over K3 billion.

Said Mbulo: “Admarc is also required to pay repatriation costs and overtime allowances which the courts have to assess as well as salary arrears for countrywide skeleton staff that worked for five months when Admarc was closed.”

But as it stands, a blame game has ensued between Admarc and the ex-workers over pension claim forms which have gone missing, a situation that has put Old Mutual on hold as the organization cannot proceed to process pension.

Said Mbulo: “Some former workers are refusing to go and fill forms for the second time, as they are placing this responsibility on Admarc. And then there is a communication breakdown with others; some moved to their villages and cannot be located while others cannot be reached through their mobile phones.”

A copy of an e-mail that we have seen, shows Admarc management asking the court for an extension of the deadline from December 19 2023 to submit the pension forms to Old Mutual.

Reads the e-mail in part: “I would like to report that we are having challenges to trace the retrenched people as some are not communicable. In addition, some claims have been returned because in some cases, the people had indicated wrong bank account numbers.”

But Mbulo also revealed that he had been reliably informed that Admarc had not yet remitted some deducted funds to Old Mutual.

“A reliable source has told me that some money has not been remitted and Admarc is waiting for government funding,” he said.

Reacting to the development, Life and Pensions Association of Malawi president Lilian Moyo said such issues are guided by clear laws which every institution must follow. She added that the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM, being the regulator of financial institutions, was best placed to offer guidance.

“It is a matter of questioning if the RBM Pension and Insurance Supervision Department is aware of the matter and what they are doing to address it. We all go there to complain,” she said.

RBM spokesperson Mark Lungu said at the moment they were not aware ofany impasse surrounding payments of pension benefits of former Admarc employees.

He said the information they have is that the pension administer for Admarc, Old Mutual Pension Services Company Limited has been providing periodic updates to the Registrar of Financial Institutions on the matter.

He said according to Old Mutual, so far Admarc is up-to-date with its pension contributions and that Admarc has been able to process over 2 000 claims from Admarc and the few claims remaining which are around 350 are pending correction of anomalies that were noted on the claim forms before they are paid.

asked for a questionnaire and he had not yet responded by the time we went to press.

On 31 January 2023, government retrenched all Admarc staff and later embarked on a recruitment drive. Then minister of Agriculture Lobin Lowe said the layoffs were part of an exercise to redefine Admarc’s functions to serve Malawians better.