FSC Board should resign

[posted 18 June 2009, 1330]

The National Farmers Union has called for the resignation of the Fiji Sugar Corporation Board in view of the current messy state of the sugar mills at the start of the crushing season.

“It is obvious that the sugar mills are still not ready to begin the 2009 crushing season, despite deferments already announced by FSC to three of its mills,” NFU general secretary Mahendra Chaudhry said.

The start of crush at the Lautoka Mill was deferred from 28 May to 9 June  and then to 16 June but the mill stopped crushing after operating for a couple of hours on Tuesday due to a machinery malfunction.

The Penang Mill which began crushing two weeks ago is still working on a stop/start basis which is playing havoc with the harvesting programme and delivery to the mills.

The Labasa Mill is facing similar problems. A 24-hour shutdown announced for Tuesday has now been extended with there being no indication when the mill will become functional again.

Meanwhile, cane lorries are piling up at the Labasa Mill due to FSC’s failure to notify farmers of the mill shutdown. As of Wednesday morning, more than  63 lorries were queued up with quota slips valid for the day before.

NFU had warned earlier that the unpreparedness of the mills and frequent breakdowns were going to cost cane farmers and the industry losses running into millions of dollars.

“The blame for this mess lies clearly with top FSC management and the Board despite the fact that consultants were brought in from Australia to spruce up the Corporation ahead of the 2009 crushing season,” Mr Chaudhry said. 

“In fact, something is seriously wrong at FSC if its Board and top management cannot accurately gauge the preparedness of the mills before announcing crushing dates. Their incompetence will result in huge loss of sugar revenue of which 70% will have to borne by the farmers,” he said.

Instead of bringing about much needed reforms in management and FSC operations, these local expatriates appear to have made things worse. I am reliably informed that local FSC executives have been badly demoralised by the interfering and bullying tactics employed by these so-called consultants.

They are former FSC executives (ex-CSR trained staff) who abandoned the Corporation after the 1987 coups and have now been brought back as advisers, Board members and executives.

“It is regrettable that the 2009 season has got on to a bad start since we need to get most of our sugar exported before the EU price cut hits in October.  This may not be possible if the mills continue to function on a stop/start basis.

The current state of unpreparedness of the mills, the pathetic condition of cane access roads, the imposition of Road User Levy on cane lorries are all having a severe impact on crushing and the delivery of adequate supplies of cane to the mills,” Mr Chaudhry said.