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By Ravi Ladduwahetty

The Government will not interfere with the negotiations of the wages of plantation workers which is within the ambit of the Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs) and the Trade Unions, Minister of Plantation Industries Lakshman Kiriella told the 66th Annual General Meeting of the Ceylon Planters' Society at the Trans Asia Hotel on Saturday night.

It is the vision of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe that the affairs of the state should be depoliticised and the plantation industry is certainly no exception unlike the way things happened, Minister Kiriella told planters.

"I have made myself very clear on that this Government will not be interfering in these wage negotiations even in the future. Of course, we will monitor the situation behind the scenes, but that is all we will do," he said.

The Minister said that the private sector was grumbling that the Government was not running the industry properly and the industry claimed that it could run it better. Now, the industry has been given the estates and it is up to the industry to carry on from there, he said.

The Minister said that the Government was also planing to lease out the remaining estates which are coming under the purview of the Janatha Estates Development Board (JEDB) through the Board of Investment (BOI), Kiriella said.

The decision to get the BOI involved is that the Ministry of Plantation Industries does not have the requisite resource personnel to value the assets. With the cooperation of the BOI Chairman, we hope to lease these estates to investors who will pay a realistic price.

The Minister said that the Government was confident of raising over Rs. 150 million per annum through the leases of the estates, which he said, was without having to pay wages. There were some investors who were willing to pay Rs. 5-6 million for some of these estates which number over fifty, he said.

Commenting on the Regional Plantation Companies, the Minister said that he studied the privatisation program of the PA regime in the last nine months as Minister of Plantation Industries and said that most of the top RPCs were grossly under valued by the Public Enterprises Reforms Commission at the time of their divestitures.

Some of the best RPCs, the Minister said, were sold at Rs. 10 per share and the entire company for Rs. 100 million where the buyers sold the companies overnight for Rs. 400 milion and thereby making a killing.

He also charged that the RPCs were not abiding by the Forestry Laws and Rights and that the Government would be retaining this when the JEDB/SLSPC estates will be leased to the private sector.

This is a very sensitive issue. We gave the RPCs the right to have access to the forests those are within them and we are getting much complaints that there is arbitrary felling of trees. We will put all these experiences into our thoughts when the privatisation of the JEDB/SLSPC estates take place, he said.

Minister Kirilla called upon the plantation companies to move away from the beaten track and go in for the cultivation of other cash crops which could fortify estate incomes. He said that the grouping of the estates have been done in such a manner that they are very large and therefore constraints arise in operational management.

Responding to the allegations from the RPCs and the industry in general that the Tea Research Institute was ineffective, the Minister called upon the RPCs to have their own research stations and promised to fund them as well.

"If you feel that the TRI, RRI and the CRI are not meeting the aspirations of the industry, you must set up your own research stations and the Government could close down these state owned research institutions at any time," he said. He pledged to allocate the requisite funds from the Cess fund that is currently collected from the tea industry.

The Minister called upon the RPCs to take advantage of donor funds to set up joint venture marketing companies to promote teas abroad. "The Asian Development Bank has allocated a US$ 15 million credit line.

This is the way for the plantation companies to go forward," he said.

Commenting on the mass exodus of young planters from the industry prematurely, he said : "This is a very alarming situation and these young planters deserve a better pay.

I am informed that these people are leaving due to the lack of a better pay and they are finding it difficult to survive. Most of the RPCs are doing very well and if these young men are offered a better pay, they will be able to survive better."

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