Nero fiddles while Ba stinks

[posted 7 Aug 2009, 1415]

Ba residents are sick of the awful stench emanating from the Ba River as FSC dumps hundreds of litres of stale cane juice into the river from its troubled mill.

We are told much of the cane juice is now being discharged into the river because the boilers are not generating enough heat to convert the juice into sugar. What a stinkin’ waste!

For at least the last two weeks stale juice has been drained into the river. It has made life utterly miserable for people in Ba town and at the Mill area. Stench aside, Ba residents are also worried about the spread of infections as a result of contaminated juice being discharged into the river.

It endangers marine life and all those who eat kai and fish from the river. It is surprising that Health Authorities have to date done nothing about the situation.

FSC, of course, is now acting like the CSR masters of yore days, answerable and accountable to no one. They choose not to respond to questions from the media regarding milling problems and under our Emergency laws the media has been told it cannot run the stories no matter how important, unless FSC responds.

It is denying mill figures even to the Growers Council in a bid to hide its deplorable mill performance. But indications are that the TCTS ratio at Rarawai mill is quite high. 

The major losers here are the growers as recipients of 70% of the proceeds of sugar. It also means Fiji is unable to take advantage of the current high price of sugar on the world market – more than $392 per tonne. We have no surplus to sell on the world market, if we can’t even meet our EU commitments!