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Tea crisis: A response to Planters’ Association

06 Jul 2015 - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Every citizen of this country should realize there are many watchdogs watching the performance of the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs). Most of these RPCs are quoted in the Colombo Stock Exchange and registered under the amended Company’s Act of 2007. After all, the lands belong to the people of Sri Lanka and no one should fool around with state property. Nevertheless, I admit the Planters’ Association (PA) has served the industry well during the pre–nationalized period, i.e. prior to 1975.

However, the million dollar question is whether Sri Lanka has benefited from privatising the country’s biggest asset, which Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s ULF government nationalized in 1972 and 1975 acquiring it from 5,000 Sri Lankan land owners and about 175 estate companies here and abroad.

Statistics
Statistics are good as long as they are comparable. The cost of production (COP) or most of the performance indicators in the plantation industry do not have established accepted standards to interpret the indicators and as such, we cannot depend on them with certainty for their accuracy. All we collectively agree with, with or without statistics, is we have an issue threatening the industry. The dangerous outcome of this condition could be the fragmentation of plantations land into smaller land parcels for various societal activities. Statistics could be furnished and elaborated to show the difficulties the RPCs had to encounter during (22) years of private management. However, strangely enough, no RPC has offered to return the estates to the state despite the difficulties in managing the plantations. According to Sir Albert Einstein, if we continue to do the same thing over and over again expecting better results, we should be in mental hospital (insanity).

Replanting
It should be noted with concern that by statute 2 percent of the total tea lands should be replanted with VP each year. Anyone is well advised to check with the Tea Commissioner‘s Department, if he/she is unable to trace the relevant gazette published in early 1960s. The better-managed estate companies such as Ceylon Tea Plantations, Standard Tea Company, Eastern Produce Holdings, Scottish Tea & Lands and several other companies followed this requirement to the letter.

Ex-planters, who were in service prior to nationalization in 1975, will remember how they had to forward the annual returns to the PA each year indicating the acreages replanted.

Late A.M.S. Perera (a former Civil Servant), who was the Secretary of the PA at that time, monitored this exercise very closely and addressed district PA meetings regularly to emphasize the importance of replanting. He did not allow the member estates to deviate from the law, which would embarrass the PA. The law may be in force even now. It’s a matter of time that someone will check whether this exercise was followed closely after the privatization in 1992. The civic-minded public is very much concerned about the present state of the privatized plantations.

No one denies the fact that the tea and rubber prices obtained lately are not the best. However, the private owners and smallholders who produce 70 percent of the national tea crop have managed to survive these difficult times because they knew the value of replanting. We admit the readymade answer that their overheads are the lowest. But the RPCs have access to better management and how far have they been successful in value addition, except for a few RPCs, which have to be commended for their initiative in the right direction?

Management contracts
The writer is surprised to learn that there is no minimum requirement or compulsion to replant tea/rubber in the management contracts signed by the RPCs. This is very strange. In other words, the RPCs are given a free hand to do whatever they like and no questions are asked. If this is how the management contracts have been drafted by the PRU attached to the Finance Ministry, those officials should explain whether the 22 management contracts drafted by them were to look after the interest of the citizens of Sri Lanka or for the benefit of the RPCs.

Conclusion
The writer has factually produced a few points to prove his stance and not to attack from the bottomless pit that these entities have fallen into. No institute or individual with sense has an ethical right to attack another but giving a helping hand to stir things up for the general betterment of the country, the people and the industry.

(Lalin I. De Silva id the former Editor of Ceylon Planter’s Society Bulletin)

Columns

Tea crisis: A response to Planters’ Association

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