Pandora hoping to bounce back from bad cheques fiasco
Farmers advised to try again
Stabroek News
January 23, 2004
Pandora Rice Inc says it's in a much better position to pay the more than 36 rice farmers its owes today after being embarrassed on Wednesday when the cheques it issued to them were dishonoured at a local commercial bank.
Chief Executive Officer of the company, Scheherazade Ishoof said she was optimistic that the mix-up which caused the cheques to be dishonoured on Wednesday would be rectified. She is therefore urging the farmers who have already received their cheques to visit the bank today to encash them.
On Wednesday the company found itself in trouble when the cheques it had issued to the farmers bounced. Contacted soon after on the matter, Ishoof told Stabroek News there was a mix-up with the money which was to be deposited into her account. Ishoof said the money, which was for rice shipped to Jamaica, was paid over to her but apparently it was transferred into the wrong account. She said the bank was trying to sort out the problem and as soon as everything was cleared up, the farmers would get their money. Ishoof also admitted that her company had received full payment for the rice it sold to Jamaica.
The CEO said the mix-up was bad for business, since already persons were accusing her of deliberately misleading the farmers.
She said there were reports circulating that she had instructed the Jamaican company, which her company shipped rice to, to transfer the money into a foreign account. She said this problem would make these allegations believable.
Rice farmers, after reading Tuesday's story in this newspaper headed `Pandora to pay rice farmers today', travelled from as far as Berbice to uplift their cheques. But when they turned up at the bank with the cheques, the tellers indicated that there was insufficient funds in the account which the cheques were drawn on. The angry farmers, who later gathered at the Rice Producers' Association headquarters in Kingston, said they would not forgive Ishoof. They said they were being deliberately pushed around and fooled by the company and would take drastic action if they did not receive their money by the end of the week.
The cheques, which were shown to this newspaper, had a total value of $2.8 million, $10.1 million short of what was owed. Ishoof had told this newspaper that consideration would have been given to the small farmers, adding that they would have received full payment, while the larger ones would receive 30% of the debt owing to them. Only four farmers were actually given cheques yesterday for the full sum owed to them.
One farmer, who gave his name as Jairam, said he was owed in excess of $1 million, but the cheque he received was written for $73,000. Jairam said the money could not even service his crops, noting that at present he needed some $200,000 to purchase fertilisers. The largest single debt to a farmer is in the region of $2 million, yet the largest cheque was only for $311,000.
Ishoof had told this newspaper that she did not only owe the 36 farmers who took her to court but several others whom she had also planned to pay Wednesday at the company's factory located at Burma.
It is not the first time rice farmers received cheques from Pandora which bounced. Last year similar problems arose and some of the farmers stormed the company's factory gate. Ishoof had told this newspaper that the reason why the cheques bounced then was because a local intermediary had mishandled her funds.
Last week Wednesday a large number of farmers from as far as Black Bush Polder, Corentyne picketed Ishoof's Begonia Avenue, Bel Air home saying they were frustrated with the delay in payments.