Parliament to scrutinize Lankan regional plantations

All Sri Lankan regional plantation companies (RPCs) will come under Parliamentary scrutiny using a more active golden shareholder, the Treasury, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said on Wednesday.
He was speaking as the chief guest at the opening ceremony of the Colombo International Tea Convention at the BMICH in Colombo which is part of the year-long celebrations to mark 150 years of tea. 
While RPCs have been given total management control of tea, rubber and coconut plantations owned by the Government, under the 1992 privatisation process the state retained a stake titled “the golden share”. 
The PM said that the government is expecting to bring in new legislation highlighting the duties and functions of the RPCs and thus ensure RPCs are answerable to Parliament (like all public institutions and agencies).
Performance of the RPCs would be assessed. "Nothing for nothing," Mr. Wickremesinghe said. The country should not be made to face the brunt of the losses made by the RPCs, he added. RPCs by private sector companies have been functioning with mounting losses which they say was due to lower tea prices, higher costs of production including wage increases despite falling tea prices. The Government however says the losses were also partly due to management issues.
The PM said that RPCs should be a standalone company where the group balance sheets (meaning non plantation companies in the group that runs the RPC) should not be accumulated to spell out the profits.
He also questioned the role of workers whether plantations can retainunder a traditional model or use contract labour.
In addition the Prime Minister pointed out that there is a need to look at family holdings of 50 acres and ensure they have easy access to credit and how to modernise them.
He also referred to the Tea Research Institute (TRI) and said it needs to be examined to ensure it is self-sustaining.
Taking a peak into the future of the tea factory, he asked whether it could be a modernization that would mean a machine small enough to fit into a garage.
He wrapped up the speech asking Plantation Minister Navin Dissanayake to deliver on Ceylon Tea as his father, the late Gamini Dissanayake, did on the accelerated Mahaweli project in the late 1970s. (Sunimalee)