Fiji Sugar Not So Sweet

• The Colonial Sugar Refining Company is to leave Fiji after nearly 90 years. The Australian giant, owner of the British colony's dominant sugar industry, doesn't believe that the enterprise is worthwhile now that a new award for the canegrowers has been introduced—and it said so plainly in an unexpected announcement in March. For details of the announcement, and the background, see PlM's com merce section. Meanwhile, this was the reaction in Fiji:

From a Suva correspondent Fiji without CSR! To some in mid-March it came as a thunderclap, to many who had closely read the Denning report it didn’t lift too many eyebrows, and to other resi dents of Fiji the news was digested as a calamity 10 times worse than the tragic sinking of the Tui Lau nearly two years ago.

Generally, reactions were mixed, ranging from pessimistic predic tions of “real trouble to come”, to cracks by a few diehard cynics that CSR “was bluffing”.

The best comment, perhaps, was a Fiji Times editorial. The situ ation should be faced “not in any spirit of great worry, or any sense of impending doom because a 90year-old situation is to end, but with determination and energy, seeking the best advice and assis tance available from all available sources,” the daily said.

Mr. M. T. Khan, secretary of the Alliance Cane Contract Com mittee was reported to have said the CSR subsidiary SPSM was “acting like a spoilt child”. How over the farmers didn’t panic.

Very disappointed

“The farmers are naturally very disappointed with the company and feel that it is not playing fair.

But it is too early to know their real reaction. The full impact of the announcement is not yet under stood,” he said.

Mr. Ram Dayal, secretary of the Fiji Sugar and General Workers Union, said his union was “deeply concerned” about the fate of its 2,500 members, who worked in the four sugar mills.

The union had submitted a new log of claims in February seeking an increase of the basic wage from

26.25 cents to 40 cents an hour, he said. The old agreement be tween SPSM and the union expired on March 31.

Mr. Dayal said CSR’s announce ment was of “serious concern” to the union. A meeting would have to be called to discuss “ramifica tions”.

Swami Rudrananda, senior growers’ representative on the Sugar Advisory Council, said he “welcomed” SPSM’s decision to sign the cane contract.

He had confidence, he said, that the cane farmers would be quite able to carry on the sugar industry and maintain it quite successfully in the future “under all circum stances”.

Official government reaction was given in a statement on March 18 following talks between the govern ment and top CSR executives. At the talks, the CSR proposed that the government should take over the CSR holding in SPSM.

The government statement said it believed the millers should give the award a fair trial and then seek a review if it found it could not operate at a reasonable profit.

It might well be that in due course SPSM should be acquired for the people of Fiji, nevertheless any such arrangements would require time and care to work out.

“It is the government’s firm in tention,” he added, “that the mills will continue to operate.”