Time for Govt. to open the eyes after Shippers’ Council Chief’s revelations

Last week for the first time the Daily FT published a substantially detailed article on the aspects of the Sri Lankan shipping industry by interviewing the chairman of the Sri Lanka Shippers’ Council. As a former employee of the Evergreen Line under the former agents in Colombo, I must acknowledge the facts out lined by the Chairman of the shippers’ council to be an actual and honest reflection of the shipping industry in Sri Lanka.

The whole shipping industry of Sri Lanka knows what happened to the ship owner of Evergreen in Colombo, not only the principal was cheated of millions of dollars and the Sri Lanka Ports Authority too was not paid for its services for a lengthy period which resulted in the change of agency to a more respectable public company recently. This is simply because the Director Merchant Shipping, the ministry and the port ignored the misconduct of agents for the last 25 years. Ironically the organization that Mr. Van Dort was highly critical of, is headed by an ex-employee who was one of the strong men at Green Lanka Shipping who was responsible for the years of mismanagement of the shipping agency. He managed to move away in time and we got stuck to face all the problems.

He was very well aware of all the collections that took place from shippers, we were instructed to collect container deposits, compulsory container washing charges from every import container, container damage charges etc. even when such damages were related to daily ship handling at various ports and not caused by the importers. The container deposits were refunded after many months and in many cases never. 

Even our wages were broken down to a basic salary and allowance, by doing so they even cheat every employee of their EPF, ETF &gratuity, while enjoying luxury life styles on the sweat and blood of all the staff. This also prevents the Government on collecting income tax due to them as well. This is taking place even today at many agencies houses.

I urge the shipping staff in all agency houses to get together and form a union to ensure our rights are protected and we are paid our dues.

I urge the Government & Inland Revenue to investigate and bring about justice to all our fellow shipping agency staff and executives who are daily suffering by these actions, and to bring about fair play and a decent wage structure to our field of work.

As  told by SLSC chairman Shipping regulation of the government which was drafted by the finance ministry stopped most of the bad practices against exporters, but if the trade ministry and the shipping ministry together with the finance ministry investigates, they will find that hundreds of dollars are being charged from the importers under the pretext of other charges by the local agents even to date, which really does not benefit anyone else other than the local agent, as it was pointed out the local importers have no option but just to pass it along to the consumer. These charges include, container deposits, damages, washing charges, container restoration charges, bank guarantee accepting charges, exorbitant delivery order fees and many more none of which is regulated or can be properly monitored or justified.

If Sri Lanka has to move up the ladder as an excellent shipping service center in South Asia, after forty years of free market, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe and his coalition cabinet has to do major changes to the shipping sector, it needs to understand the business as pointed out by SLSC chairman, government need to remove protection given to agents under the cover of central bank. Director merchant shipping and the ministry of shipping has to introduce regulation for local imported consignments which has totally gone out of control.

I as an employee of the shipping industry think that time is right to change the direction and the new Minister of shipping Mr. Mahinda Samarasighe as an educated, responsible and a respected gentleman should look at the sector more closely. He may rely on new port chairman to guide him but this is not the way forward as mentioned by SLSC chairman as he is an adviser to CASA and one time vice chairman of CASA  when THC  was introduce. The new chairman will certainly look into the interest of agents and shipping lines as over thirty years the only area of business he was involved was with shipping lines, agents and ports.

National interest has to be in the hands of absolutely neutral parties with no vested interest. I was also told by an industry  colleague that a cabinet memorandum was submitted to the then  Government of  Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe in 2003 by the then shipping Minister Rauff Hakeem requesting not to bring laws against THC. SLSC must consider this and find out who drafted the document to the then shipping minister as now you can obtain them through the right to information act. This was the fact that was mentioned by Van Dort that Hon Ravi Karunanayake’s efforts were not allowed to go through in 2003 to stop bad practices in shipping agency by this memo.

The new Minister must appoint a committee with people like the governor central bank, , and the support of an economist like deputy minister Dr Harsha de Silva to give him an independent report on the policy side. We need this caliber of experts to do an analysis to find the truth and make things more transparent in shipping. Sadly, the current structure of the merchant shipping division does not give director merchant shipping the environment all though he understands the issue.

As a citizen of Sri Lanka, I call upon business associations, individuals to come out now and act with responsibility toward the country and its people. Consumer products, consumer essentials all are being artificially increased by an organised set of agents as pointed out by SLSC chief, it is certainly time that government open its eyes and understand domestic supply chain corruption and put a stop to it.

A responsible shipping industry employee