No Double Talk – FSC

[posted 10 June 2010, 1630]

FSC Chief Executive Deo Saran should stop his double talk to cane-growers.

His plea to “support the sugar mills with consistent supply of cane,” and his promise that 2010 season would be better than the last, are nothing short of an apology for a failed corporate entity that FSC is today.

This crushing season got off to a bad start with Penang mill breaking down four times since it began crushing 9 days ago. We gave the details in our earlier stories but this week the mill remained out of action from Monday until Wednesday. When it resumed crushing, the throughput was too low to clear the backlog of laden lorries and rail trucks.

Mr. Saran has once again indulged in FSC’s old game of blaming the “poor” quality of cane for the high TCTS. This is nonsense, as the Sugar Research Institute statistics will reveal. The high TCTS was the direct result of chronically malfunctioning mills and nothing else.

As a result, the farmers were cheated of $70 million or about $30 per tonne of cane because of FSC negligence and its non-compliance with the Master Award. This year, Mr. Saran tells us that FSC is budgeting for a TCTS of 10.5 tonnes compared to last year’s 14. This, in itself, is admission of FSC’s guilt and it should be required to compensate the farmers for last year’s loss.

However, a TCTS of 10.5 tonnes is unsatisfactory when one of the objectives of the $86 million mill upgrade was to reduce it to 8.5. So, the farmers are still taken for a ride in that two tonnes of their cane for every tonne of sugar manufactured is going to waste because of milling inefficiencies.

Who will compensate them? Or, will we see a gradual demise of the industry which today is in the most incompetent hands in its history.