Former employees of the defunct Nigerian Beverages Production Company Limited would be paid their entitlements, according to Taraba State Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku.

The move, he said, will benefit people who have been selected by the committee set up to screen former employees of the collapsed enterprise, which is situated in the Kakara community of the state’s Sardauna council.

The governor mentioned this on Friday while receiving a report on the former payment of backlog salaries owing to Highland Tea ex-staff, adding that the company had helped the state reduce its high rate of youth unemployment.

He said the sum of N30 million had been granted by his administration for the payments, showing his resolve to repay the claims of former workers of the beverages company.

“Our ladies and youths are gainfully employed,” he remarked, elated by the reduction in unemployment with the enterprise “in Kakara.”

“What my administration achieved to ensure permanent peace on the Mambilla Plateau has brought all the major tribes together,” he said, emphasizing how his choice to build additional chiefdom in the state has given each tribe a sense of belonging.

Ishaku, who also used the forum to warn traditional rulers against selling territories inside their domains arbitrarily, said his administration will not tolerate any king who engages in such behavior.

Mambilla Beverages Nigeria Limited, according to Iliya Ezekiel, Chief Executive Officer of Taraba Investment and Property Limited, was founded after the defunct Nigeria Beverages Production Company Limited collapsed in 2015.

He emphasized how the existing state government revitalized and reorganized the company, claiming that the company employed a large number of unemployed youths who he claimed would have been going about making life difficult for innocent people.

He said that the company hired a total of 3, 000 state residents, and also over 2, 000 farmers in 27 areas through the company’s out growers’ plan and distributors nationwide.