THA to invest more $ in Tadco

The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) will soon move to invest more funds into the Tobago Agribusiness Development Company (Tadco).

So says THA Chief Secretary Farley Augustine following a meeting with the staff at their workplace one week ago. Augustine described the meeting as “cordial”, saying he was glad he went.

Last week, Tadco employee Shawn Toppin asked Augustine to visit Tadco and see for himself what was happening there.

Tadco is a special-purpose company formed in 2020 under the purview of the THA Division of Food Security, Natural Resources, the Environment and Sustainable Development. The company is an amalgamation of three state entities under the assembly – the Fish Processing Company of Tobago Ltd, Tobago Cold Storage & Warehouse Facility Ltd and Tobago Cassava Production Ltd. The merger was intended to reduce duplication of efforts and create opportunities for synergies, efficiencies and effective management and development of the sector.

Augustine spoke with Newsday on Monday, two days after the meeting.

“Extremely cordial, extremely respectful meeting and I was just happy to be there to listen to them. Coming out of that meeting, there is a good sense of direction and people feel a bit more comforted.”

Saying it was an extremely long meeting, he said participants went through several issues.

“Key for the workers, is that they felt that from the board and the CEO, they weren’t getting sufficient information in terms of the strategic output for the company, so we agreed on those things. We looked at issues related to security. We looked at all the gaps in the system, including processing. We looked at equipment and moving equipment that we just have stored away unutilised elsewhere into the company so that they can accelerate their programmes.”

Productivity issues, he said were also discussed.

“We need people who are contracted for 8-4 to be there 8-4.”

In addition, “A lot of the people spoke about how the three companies were now combined. Unfortunately, I had to apologise for a time before my time, because I did not wind up those companies. So the HR issues they were having were no fault of mine or ours, but I gave them a commitment that we would try to have them remedied, and I brought some solutions to the table to remedy some of those HR matters...and the kinds of additions to the structure that would be required.”

He said they also spoke about the need for technical staff who can maintain the machines, health and safety and an increase in security, among other areas that require input.

“Even in that meeting, we were able to look at the fact that some of the workers right there might have some competencies and can be moved to other departments internally, but there would be a need to get some externally to beef up the operations there."

He admitted Tadco is not profitable at this point.

“When you start a new business, very often profit doesn’t come in your first couple years. It's rare if you make profit in your first two-three years.

"They are approaching their third-year mark in September and what I think did not happen, I think we merged all those companies, but we did not – as a THA – we did not put a sufficient capital injection into the company at the start to give them an even better chance of doing well.”

He said his team will look at doing that now.

“We believe we are in a very good place. Tadco has seen some remarkable feats in recent times.”

He said going to TADCO is part of a programme that he has started of going to different departments within the assembly and meeting with the staff. He said to date he has visited Studley Park Enterprise Ltd (SPEL), and the Roxborough Hospital, among a few others.