Poor quality of decision-making main cause for destruction of Regional Plantation Companies
Thursday, 21 April 2016
Through a series of newspaper articles during the past few months, we have been stressing on the systematic killing of the world renowned Plantations industry of Sri Lanka. These articles covered the gist of the evolution of the plantations industry of Sri Lanka since the first nationalisation of lands by the then Minister of Agriculture and lands, the late Hector Kobbekaduwa under the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government way back in 1972, to the present times, covering more than 40 years.
We thank all those newspapers wholeheartedly for a yeoman service to the nation, by publishing them amidst fierce propaganda by a small yet powerful group of anti Sri Lankans claiming to be the industry leaders. They propose handing over the plantations to the workers with a different name tag called ‘revenue sharing’ and furthermore getting these poor workers to pay for the sins committed during a long period of time by the senseless top rung of the RPCs.
They seem to be thinking that this handover (revenue sharing model) is the only viable option to overhaul and to turn around the loss making plantations managed by RPCs. However, some RPCs have undertaken this task already. Can they get those lands back from their current recipients, the workers? The failure to do so will definitely lead to the cannibalisation and destruction of the lands. Was it a collective decision by all the RPCs? No, it was not! Then, how can such a poor mechanism be implemented without the knowledge of the golden share? Isn’t this an instance of poor quality decision making again?
Depleted resources
Most of the tea and rubber fields in many RPCs are in the process of becoming uneconomical due to the fact the desired level of replanting had not taken place on time. Either they are more than 30 years in production, hence, past their prime or, in the case of rubber; the bark is fully gone, due to poor quality decisions by the top management. So how on earth can the poor workers be expected to increase labour productivity when the bush and the tree both have reached an age of senility, on top of the fact that the soil on which these crops grow have been left to be eroded and hence depleted of nutrients?
Is there hope for Sri Lanka’s mismanaged plantations industry?
Thursday, 21 April 2016Through a series of newspaper articles during the past few months, we have been stressing on the systematic killing of the world renowned Plantations industry of Sri Lanka. These articles covered the gist of the evolution of the plantations industry of Sri Lanka since the first nationalisation of lands by the then Minister of Agriculture and lands, the late Hector Kobbekaduwa under the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government way back in 1972, to the present times, covering more than 40 years.
We thank all those newspapers wholeheartedly for a yeoman service to the nation, by publishing them amidst fierce propaganda by a small yet powerful group of anti Sri Lankans claiming to be the industry leaders. They propose handing over the plantations to the workers with a different name tag called ‘revenue sharing’ and furthermore getting these poor workers to pay for the sins committed during a long period of time by the senseless top rung of the RPCs.
They seem to be thinking that this handover (revenue sharing model) is the only viable option to overhaul and to turn around the loss making plantations managed by RPCs. However, some RPCs have undertaken this task already. Can they get those lands back from their current recipients, the workers? The failure to do so will definitely lead to the cannibalisation and destruction of the lands. Was it a collective decision by all the RPCs? No, it was not! Then, how can such a poor mechanism be implemented without the knowledge of the golden share? Isn’t this an instance of poor quality decision making again?
Depleted resources
Most of the tea and rubber fields in many RPCs are in the process of becoming uneconomical due to the fact the desired level of replanting had not taken place on time. Either they are more than 30 years in production, hence, past their prime or, in the case of rubber; the bark is fully gone, due to poor quality decisions by the top management. So how on earth can the poor workers be expected to increase labour productivity when the bush and the tree both have reached an age of senility, on top of the fact that the soil on which these crops grow have been left to be eroded and hence depleted of nutrients?
