A St. Vincent-based farmers group has written to an international shipping company about the financial and other impacts that random cancellation of calls to Port Kingstown are having on its business.
“Over several months, Geest has been randomly cancelling regularly scheduled calls to Port Kingstown at what can only be described as the last minute,” Jethro Green, coordinator of Eastern Caribbean Trading Agricultural & Development Organisation (ECTAD), said in an April 18 letter to the UK headquarters of Geest Line.
Greene said that on Wednesday, April 18, sometime shortly after 12:30 p.m. — the deadline for closing off orders to Geest — he was told that the Geest ship would not be calling to St. Vincent.
“Today’s cancellation came after ECTAD had confirmed with Geest’s agent in Kingstown since Monday April 16th that we would have a shipment and after we had already purchased and prepared for shipment almost 300 boxes of produce at a cost of over Eighteen Thousand dollars ($18,000 EC). No explanation was given for today’s cancellation,” Greene said.
In the letter which was copied to Minister of Agriculture, Saboto Caesar, among others, Greene said another “random and unexplained cancellation” occurred in February, when ECTAD had a shipment to England, but GEEST cancelled the shipments for two consecutive weeks.
“ECTAD had to store its dasheen shipment in refrigerated storage at tremendous cost to our organisation (a cost, which we are still struggling to offset).
“GEEST’s unreliable scheduling to St. Vincent is literally costing ECTAD our business, unless we can reliably ship produce to our customers we will not be able to maintain our supplier arrangements and our operations will fold,” Greene said.
He said that like most small non-profit organisations, ECTAD has little operational capital, and cannot sustain the losses to revenue that result from these cancelled schedules.
“Currently, we are trying to figure out how to handle this week’s cancellation as we cannot afford to pay for refrigerated storage,” he said.
As paying customers, we expect and demand more transparency and clarity from Geest regarding the schedule and the reasoning behind these seemingly random cancellations. We also request compensation either for the cost of refrigerated storage or for loss of revenue for our shipment. We also recommend that Geest arrange for or provides cold storage facilities for our perishable goods when they cancel scheduled port calls randomly, irrationally and without timely notice.”
In reiterating “the devastating impact of this situation”, Greene said that ECTAD has fought hard to secure private investors to support its operations.
“We operate on razor thin budgets and absolutely depend on reliable weekly shipments to sustain our operations. Every time Geest decides to cancel a shipment, we suffer financially. Our financial losses affect the dozens of small farmers that grow the produce we supply.
“At a time when investment capital is increasingly difficult to secure, when less and less agricultural produce is exported from St. Vincent, and when our farmers have fewer and fewer options to market and sell their product, Geest needs to commit to helping, rather than hindering, our agricultural trading sector,” he said.
This is unacceptable, fully endorsed Mr Green call for compensation.
It is nonsensical to blame Geest for bypassing a country with a pitiful 300 boxes of produce to ship. If Greene wants reliable service he needs to ensure a reliably high enough level of production to make a Geest pickup economically viable.
Still, I thought that Saboto Caesar said that a lot of this produce would be shipped by air via Amerijet from our airport at Argyle. What happened to that brilliant plan?
All of them are jokers.
C. Ben-David
Amerijet does not have any flights from SVG to the UK.
But it has flights to several Caribbean destinations several times a week from Florida but only one to and from SVG with stops elsewhere in the region which again suggests how little produce we have to ship.
300 boxes 3 boxes or 3000 boxes , commitment is commitment, simple curtesy and professionalism
1. Geest needs to commit to supporting rather than hindering St. Vincents agriculture trading sector.
2. With 300 boxes of produce we should have respect for the St. Vincent Farmers because Mr. Jethro Greene is boosting mondial Food Security.
3. An international shipping company should demonstrate more dignity and reliability.
Ir. Reinier Taus
Food Scientist
Coordinator ECTAD-Suriname
GEEST brings to SVG several containers of food and other products.during their port of call.. its take several container loads of products from traders ,merchants , framers groups ,ECGC and others . it does not come to pick up 300 boxes that will be silly to think, GEEST how ever require you to submit in writing final confirmation by wednesday morning, to its agents COREAS HAZEL INC, amounts of products to be shipped , to whom and payment of freight.. If your packages are short they will not take your cargo.. So by wednesday you are already more than half way though your product preparation. If we are informed by monday evening that the port of call is cancelled we will be ok with that… SVG own shares in GEEST the least we asked for is advance notice.
Every company has to do what is right for the company, they are not a charity.
Amen. But our precious country is being run like a charity, if not a basket case.
Sue them. Simple.
c.ben is such an educated dunce he honestly believes Geest the UK empty to collect 300 boxes of produce ALONE . such a fool that looks for every opportunity to bash AIA backward man who hates SVG but continues to enjoy all it has to offer