Jobs threat at station

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 28

Jobs threat at station

From DIANA DEKKER in London Little hope exists that the British Government will reconsider proposed cuts in the budget of the Welsh Plant Breeding Station, near Aberystwyth. Cuts may even be more restrictive than station staff at first believed, says a spokesman, Mr Mike Shaw. More than a quarter of the 200 staff at the station may eventually lose their jobs. When the cuts in the station’s budget were announced earlier in the year it was expected that less than 30 redundancies would be involved. The station is well known throughout the world and in New Zealand particularly for work on grasses, clovers, animal nutrition

and cereal breeding. It has had a long-standing association with New Zealand centres of agricultural research.

Mr Shaw said that redundancy notices were already being distributed. He believed 26 people would be made redundant and another 20 would be lost after being encouraged to retire. “Some of them are being lost in very crucial areas and a lot of important work will be done away with or will lose its direction,” he said.

“We are still trying to change things. We hope to get private interests to take over one particular programme. We have written to the Secretary of State for Wales asking to meet him, but it doesn’t look terribly hopeful.”