The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) is the State enterprise tasked with the administration of loan facilities to farmers, fishermen and agribusiness entrepreneurs of our nation. It allows for many of these people who cannot access traditional loans from commercial institutions to do so through this State enterprise.
Commercial banks typically avoid financing these people and their projects because they are deemed to be high risk given the vagaries of the agricultural sector hinged on weather patterns now affected by climate change and other nebulous factors.
Hence the ADB provides a vital service to the development and functioning of the agricultural sector and whose role is becoming ever more significant to the country's populace as we attempt to feed ourselves in a highly volatile, inflationary global environment and a weakening TT dollar.
As a service-based organisation one would realise that the most valued resource of the Agricultural Development Bank should be its employees. Many of our fellow countrymen view public sector employees as inept, uncaring and selfish workers concerned more with collecting a paycheck than providing a service. It is not so at the ADB and many farmers can provide testimonials to this.
While delivery times are long and the processes are convoluted, in a majority of instances this is not because of the employee but are the outcomes of poorly structured work flows, insufficient staffing issues, antiquated technologies, draconian policies and highly bureaucratic procedures perpetrated by political puppets masquerading as executive management.
Yet, for all its flaws, the ADB remains an integral pillar in the growth and development of the agricultural sector and its role is critical to achieving greater food security for our nation.
However, the employees of the Bank are treated with scant courtesy and the resultant impact will be on unsuspecting farmers. The employees of the Bank are currently engaged in wage negotiations for the period 2011�2013. Hence they are living on 2010 salaries in the year 2016 and whose purchasing power has been eroded significantly within recent times in particular.
Young professionals and families can no longer survive on these meagre 2010 salaries. The employees have worked hard and are owed their just dues. The payments to be made to these employees will come from the coffers of the ADB as the Bank is a state enterprise and earns income on loans to commercial agricultural businesses.
The Bank's Management has submitted a proposal to the office of the Chief Personnel Officer demonstrating the ADB's ability to pay a 14 per cent increase and back pay to employees, but yet payments have not been forthcoming. The reason for this is unacceptable to the employees.
Since September of 2015 there has been no meeting of the Human Resources Advisory Committee (previously called the Public Sector Negotiations Committee), chaired by the Minister of Finance, to give approval for the proposal of 14 per cent to be offered to the ADB workers. To reiterate, the Bank has sufficient monies to pay a 14 per cent increase and back pay to employees; it has budgeted to do so, but the employees are made to suffer because this Inter-Ministerial committee has not met after almost a year of the regime change in 2015.
Not only have the employees suffered but their families have as well. Agribusiness entrepreneurs will be forced to suffer if these employees seek redress via protest action or other industrial action. There will be long-term negative impacts on the Bank as its capacity to attract qualified graduates and high quality employees will be diminished.
This will have an overall negative impact during a crucial time in our history as a nation when greater emphasis needs to be placed on food security achieved only by institutional strengthening and provision of support services to the sector.
The withholding of employees' deserved and already earned income is indubitably the antithesis of this objective. I plead on their behalf for the intervention of the Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister in having this issue resolved.
Shawn Cassie,
Arima