Wilmer Cuts Down Its $400M Investment In Cross River State – Governor

by crossriverwatch admin

The Cross River State Governor, Senator Liyel Imoke has disclosed that Wilmar International Limited, a Singaporean firm that established a 50, 000 hectare of palm oil plantation in the state (Ibiae Palm Estate) with an investment of 400 million dollars is withdrawing its investment.

The governor made the disclosure while addressing youths at the 2014 International Youth Week celebration in Calabar.

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His word: “Wilmer recently said they are reducing their investment in Cross River, the Chairman, Chief Executive of the company who was investing 400 million dollars in your economy, his own money on the oil palm value chain sent me a letter saying I am very sorry I can’t continue to invest”.

According to him, the reason is “Wilmer conducted an exercise where the local community said they should employ youths, which is typical, of course they employed the youths and did a screening, the youths were working and they found out that about 7-9 of them had fake certificates and stopped them from working and said we have to verify these your certificates, we only employ people who have no complications.

“The youths went on rampage started beating up their staff, shut down their operations and I told the community to bring out the person (s)that did this, the community can’t. 400million dollars and 5000 jobs coming into the society and because of the youths of Akamkpa, the people said they will no longer continue”.

Soliloquizing rhetorically, Imoke said, “How do you transform the society? Where is the transformation coming from? We must be able to understand that what it requires is not what we have today”.

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