Shakib answers for mishap at his agro farm

There was a recent controversy about Shakib Al Hasan as the player's agro farm in Satkhira was accused of not paying the due salaries of four months of their workers. Around 200 workers protested near the farm on Monday, April 22 asking for their salaries as they were all in a dire situation considering the current situation because of the coronavirus outbreak. 

The management of the farm later came up with a response that Shakib did not know about the situation and also the workers would be paid on April 30. 

For now, Shakib has paid the workers from his personal funds and clarified the matter on his Facebook page. He said that he did not know of the situation and took action as soon as it came to his knowledge. He also added that there might be some hidden agendas which led to the workers being instigated.

His Facebook status read, "I would like to apologise for the late response but I wanted to gather all relevant information so that I can relay the truth to you all. Although my name is directly associated with the Agro Farm, due to my busy professional schedule, the company, like my other companies, are usually run by my co-owners/working partners. I hardly get a chance to get involved in those businesses' daily affairs or even visit the offices or premises. As you all know, I have been away from Bangladesh for most of the year as we are expecting our second child and over this period of time I was not updated with the business affairs of my Agro Farm at all and only came to find out about the employee dispute through the media. My co-owners and working partners failed to inform me properly of what was going on over the last few months but they had promised the very few employees (who were retained ) with an agreed month's salary to be paid by April 30, 2020. All of the employees were laid off by the end of January. Despite agreeing to wait till April 30, those employees surprisingly took to the streets and created chaos probably being instigated by some people with hidden agendas and ill intentions.

However, as soon as I realised there was a serious issue, I resolved the situation by taking full responsibility to pay all the due salaries from my own personal funds and without any assistance from company funds or the co-owners. In any case, I believe this was an internal affair of a company which should have remained internal. I was very shocked to see the employees fail to wait till the end of the month as they had agreed or created so much unrest. Like many others, I have been trying to gather funds for other people like them who are distressed under the current crisis so I'm confused as to why people would think I would deprive a handful of employees (and many more) of ours who have been paid regularly for over 3 years.

Unfortunately, I realised that this story was blown out of proportion by the media who failed to look the same in depth and with integrity. It would have been better if they had tried to seek the truth rather than go for sensational headlines which was partly false and mostly misleading.

I truly believe that the media have a strong role to play by verifying the truth and build their stories based on factual information or else they may end up hurting people like me for no apparent reason. They could have easily raised the issue mentioning the overall scenario and every co-owners name rather than blaming me or mentioning me only. Neither me nor anyone else deserves false accusations of this nature. I earnestly hope that the media and journalists will take more care when reporting.

As a nation, I sincerely think we have more important work to do given the current crisis and need to be vigilant and strong against any kind of misleading information and fabrication of the truth. I think we need to focus our attention on more vital topics.

Everyone please stay safe and well."

Shakib has been working to battle the coronavirus pandemic with his 'The Shakib Al Hasan Foundation' and also put on auction the bat with which he scored 606 runs in the 2019 Cricket World Cup.