Win for Seawin, and Lankan crooks?

Friday 24th December, 2021

Qingdao Seawin Biotech Group, which refused to accept the results of tests conducted by the National Plant Quarantine Services (NPQS) of Sri Lanka on samples of its fertiliser, is reported to have claimed that its product has been found to be uncontaminated and safe. It says it has got samples of the shipment of fertiliser it failed to unload here, tested in Singapore, and they have been found to contain no harmful microorganisms such as Erwinia.

A case is thus being made for clearing the proposed payment of USD 6.7 million to Qingdao Seawin, which is on the warpath, following its unsuccessful bid to sell contaminated fertliser to this country. The government of Sri Lanka, whose leaders are beholden to China, which looks after their interests, is more than willing to make the payment and be done with it for obvious reasons; its cronies are behind the questionable fertiliser deal; they opened a letter of credit for the importation of the stock of fertiliser even before the NPQS had tested the samples thereof. Such was their hurry to put the deal through!

Interestingly, Qingdao Seawin, which contemptuously rejected the NPQS test reports as unscientific and unreliable, has had its fertiliser tested at a lab of its choosing and got the result it desired. The credibility of its latest claim based on a foreign lab report is in doubt. Nobody knows whether fertiliser samples tested in Singapore were properly obtained.

The NPQS repeated its tests on the fertiliser samples at issue and got the same result; they contained Erwinia. Therefore, it is the NPQS test results that the government of Sri Lanka must go by. The Chinese company cannot be expected to tell us the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about its own product. Commercial ventures are notorious for making false claims when they get into trouble. How Litro Gas attempted a grand cover-up the other day is a case in point; it insisted that no change had been effected to the composition of cooking gas, and explosions were due to substandard regulators, hoses and cookers. But it was found to be lying thanks to an investigation by a special presidential committee. So, it is only natural that a foreign company is defending its product.

There have been several instances where Sri Lankan companies got paid for importing foreign waste and dumping it here on the pretext of recycling it. Hundreds of freight containers full of foreign garbage including hospital waste have been taken into custody over the years. A controversial free trade agreement the yahahapala government entered into with Singapore also has provision for bringing in foreign waste. Thankfully, it has not been implemented. Perhaps, it is for the first time that a foreign company is to be paid for a failed attempt to dump what is described in some quarters as waste masquerading as fertiliser, here. (Such is the love the self-proclaimed patriots at the levers of power have for the country!) This is the fate that awaits a nation whose leaders steal public wealth to enrich themselves at the expense of the economy, and sell their souls to external forces that help them with their illegal operations.

If the government goes ahead with its decision to pay the Chinese fertiliser company USD 6.7 million, the Sri Lankan public must not be made to cough up funds for the questionable payment. The ruling party cronies responsible for the dirty fertiliser deal must be made to pay the company concerned with their personal funds. These elements must be having huge amounts of dollars in their offshore accounts and a fraction of them could be used to settle the payment at issue.