Financial Times

Industry responds to Sunday Times FT comments

Dr Ziyad Mohamed’s issue

Tyeab Akbarally, chairman of the Colombo Tea Traders’ Association, has issued the following press release titled “Tea Industry Media Release” in response to The Sunday Times FT editorial last week on issues relating to Dr Ziyad Mohamed who was sent a vacation of notice and then reinstated when President Mahinda Rajapaksa intervened:

The Financial Supplement of a Sunday newspaper of May 28, 2006, in its Editorial, carried a serious indictment against the tea industry. Its contents, referring to the apathy of the industry in relation to an incident involving a prominent industry personality, were completely misleading, untruthful and baseless and the writer was obviously acting either on misinformation or with mischievous intent.

The tea industry, on hearing of the appalling events that transpired following Dr. Ziyad Mohamed’s return to the country from an official visit to Japan, as a member of an Industry Technical Delegation, was shocked and dismayed in the extreme. Immediately, all stakeholder associations jointly conferred amongst themselves and determined a strategy to seek relief for Dr. Mohamed in his distressing predicament and to clear his name.

Each association, which included the Colombo Tea Traders’ Association, the Planters’ Association of Ceylon, the Colombo Brokers’ Association, the Tea Exporters’ Association, the Private Tea Factory Owners’ Association and the Sri Lanka Federation of Tea Small Holder Development Societies, undertook to strenuously explore every avenue available to them towards achieving these objectives.

Communications were addressed to all relevant state authorities and personally delivered by delegations, which met with key officials/decision makers, to make written and verbal appeals on behalf of Dr. Mohamed. Copies of documents, critical to the legal process, were obtained, duly certified by appropriate officials and submitted to the legal and law enforcement authorities.

Morale support measures were employed, to sustain Dr. Mohamed through these traumatic circumstances.

All these initiatives were tempered by discretion to spare Dr. Mohamed any more embarrassment and humiliation, in the public eye, than was absolutely necessary. Also, the tea industry is not inclined to basely publicise its actions of concern on behalf of a colleague in distress and would rather maintain a low profile and work quietly, albeit effectively, behind the scenes. We consider it grossly unfair and unprofessional on the part of a so-called responsible media institution that such unwarranted criticism should be leveled against a noble Industry.

Business editor says:

At least at this late stage the Tea Traders’ Association is coming into the open about how it “fought the case of Dr Ziyad.”

We are now informed that the various stakeholders did in fact get two important documents certified from the Plantations Ministry Secretary which helped in Dr Mohamed’s release from detention. We’ll like to applaud that effort.
But did that change things? For more than two weeks (May 3 to May 19) the sacked TRI director wasn’t sure whether his appeal would work or whatever steps the industry now says it has been doing, to ensure his reinstatement. Our sources say Dr Mohamed met the President, through another contact, on May 19 and appealed directly to the head of state over the victimization. The President had then immediately ordered his reinstatement.

Until then Dr Mohamed, our sources say, was looking at a dismal future and wondering whether he should get another job.

Now if the President didn’t intervene, would Dr Mohamed have got his job back? Knowing the politics of this country you can be sure the TRI director would still be out of a job. The industry says they didn’t want to make public their efforts but it was they (some officials) who informed the media in the first place.

So why couldn’t they tell us what was going on instead of “keep a low profile” (as stated in our editorial “At least publicly nothing was done or seen to be done”)?

There was nothing mischievous in our comment. Our point was that the industry was not putting enough pressure to stop the harassment of a respected official who had to appeal to the President to stop the injustice. Otherwise the injustice would have continued to this day and we would have lost another good official.

Small point:

I presume Mr Akbarally was speaking on behalf of the entire tea industry as the statement is titled “Tea Industry media release” and didn’t come on any letterhead.

It speaks of an editorial in a Sunday newspaper without naming the paper. The release was not sent to us but to the Daily Mirror and was issued by “Tyeab Akbarally – Chairman, Colombo Tea Trade Association.” A genuine error (Tea Trade instead of Traders’) I presume or is there a new association?

Tea rumpus

Tea Association of Sri Lanka says it is active but lacks funds

The Tea Association of Sri Lanka, the focus of a report in The Sunday Times FT two weeks back, denies that there is nothing happening at the organization as claimed by a government official.

“We have no problem with the rest of the (FT) story but it’s incorrect to say that ‘nothing is happening’ as stated by a government official,” said Godfrey Dias-Wanigasekera, CEO of TASL.

In the report, Ranjit Premadasa, project director at the Plantation’s Ministry Plantation Development Project (PDP) which provides ADB funds to the TASL is quoted as saying: “Nothing is happening there. We are doling out money for operations but there is no activity. So far Rs 21 million has been provided for the upkeep of the organisation mainly as operational costs. There is no activity.”

The TASL CEO and two other directors from the organization agreed that they had problems but nevertheless emphasized that there was a lot of things happening on marketing initiatives – collaboration in research and development, marketing intelligence and a resource centre, support for an automated tea auction trading and alternative marketing initiatives. They accused the authorities of blocking a lot of the work that TASL was doing in the quality field.

They said TASL research specialists have also visited 150 factories and produced – as a service to the industry – ‘model’ manuals on quality, HACCP and GMP documents to assist factories to develop their own. “We have being doing this with limited resources and little government support,” said Dr Dhayan Kirthisinghe, TASL’s Quality Certification Manager.

After TASL complained to Premadasa about his remarks to The Sunday Times FT, the latter sent a letter to the newspaper clarifying what he said.

“I didn’t mean to say that ‘nothing is happening there’. The TASL is continuing to work on the quality certification programme which they have done during the last three years and although they have visited (a) number of factories, the results cannot be seen as they have issued only two certificates. Apart from this activity, TASL has not shown much progress on the other expected activities,” Premadasa said, also clarifying that the reference to an audit query in the article was from the Auditor General and not the ADB.

TASL, referring to Premadasa’s latest comments on little progress in other activities, said: “We are restricted in doing so in view of counterpart funding in the form of cess still not being in place. Even the ADB has referred to this situation as being a violation of the agreement entered into by them with the government, in correspondence.”

Premadasa said the PDP is not overseeing TASL but facilitating it by providing funds for the identified activities. TASL counters this saying the PDP continues to micro-manage TASL affairs even though the ADB says this division is to only facilitate funds to the TASL.

Responding to Premadasa’s other point on issuing only two certificates, TASL said four certificates had been issued and noted that: “there is no government support (financial) to factory owners (like in a couple of other producing countries), for them to upgrade their factories to qualify for certification standards.” Business editor’s note: It was Premadasa who told this paper that “nothing is happening (at TASL)”. Those words were his, not ours.

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