It’s back to CSR days for Fiji’s poor cane farmers

FSC continues to deny growers data on the amount of sugar manufactured weekly at each of its mills, adding to suspicion that it has something to hide.
It takes the industry back to the days of the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (FSC) when growers often felt cheated of their proper dues because the Company kept such data confidential.
This situation was rectified only after the 1970 Denning Award which finally provided justice and equity to growers and brought a modicum of stability to the sugar industry.
Forty-five years later, things appear to have come full circle. Once again executives of the milling company, no doubt under directions from their (local) expatriate consultants, themselves former CSR staff, are withholding vital information from growers in an industry in which they have a 70% stake.
However, figures NFU managed to obtain show that mills are still performing pathetically indicated by an increasingly poor overall TCTs of 14 tonnes of cane being used to produce one tonne of sugar.
Mill statistics for the week ending 20th July are as follows:
Lautoka Mill
Weekly cane crushed (tonnes) 22,354
Total crushed to date 65,393
Penang Mill
Weekly cane crushed (tonnes) 11,935
Total crushed to date 75,880
Labasa Mill
Weekly cane crushed (tonnes) 32,017
Total crushed to date 141,204
Rarawai Mill
Weekly cane crushed (tonnes) 4,566
Total crushed to date 6,799
Total sugar in stock : 21,000 tonnes with 12,000 T at Labasa and 9000T at Lautoka
TCTS 14
FSC is still 9000 tonnes short of a full load for the deferred shipment now due at the end of the month of July, 2009.