FARGO in Missing Pension Funds Scandal

By: Thula Chisamba
Investigations conducted by The Malawi Star team indicates millions of pension funds have gone missing at FARGO Malawi Limited.

The development has seen the company failing to settle pension funds to about 28 retired employees. It is believed that some of the company’s top officials swindled the whole funding which was meant for paying such people.

“They mismanaged the funds meant for that process. What happened was that after the allocation some took the advantage,” said an inside source.

Separate findings by this publication shows that a good number of the company’s retirees in Mzimba are not receiving their funds since 2012 due to the scum.

One of the victims Ronald Chisi told The Malawi Star that despite several attempts to get his money, officials have been unable to respond positively.

“Our team then decided to seek help from Mzimba labour office last year but they are also coy to help us. Those people are sitting on the money that we have already worked for years ago. It’s not fair,” said Chisi.

In the Mzimba case, this publication can establish that the lowest paid employee is suppose to get about MK 200,000 as his pension but since then, no one has received even half of the total amount.

This is a testimony that someone somewhere on top might have swindled their money.

Nonetheless, the employees have threatened to take the company to the industrial relations court for legal judgement on the issue if they will not get their money by next month.

“We believe that will be the final stage because we have waited from them for so long but we are not getting any tangible response at all,” said Nixon Mphande, another FARGO Malawi ex-employee.

When our publication wanted to hear the other side of story from officials of the company, efforts proved futile due to poor communication.

However, our team is still on the ground for further investigations on the matter.