LAYYAH, Jan 21: Provincial Parliamentary Secretary (Jails) Maher Fazal Hussain Sumra has condemned short measuring of the sugarcane at the purchasing centres of sugar mills, inflicting a loss of millions of rupees to the growers.

At a joint meeting of the district administration and representatives of the Layyah Sugar Mills, Mr Sumra vowed to protect the economic interest of growers and asked the mills management to ensure full measurement of sugarcane at its purchasing points. The meeting was chaired by District Nazim Sardar Shahab Din Sehar.

Speaking on the occasion, the District Nazim said that there were number of complaints of short measuring of sugarcane at the mills throughout the district. He said that the government was committed to eliminate this illegal practice and the mills found involved in it would be taken to task.

The Layyah Sugar Mills management assured the meeting that it would not allow short measuring of the sugarcane at its purchasing points during the rest of the crushing season.

Earlier, the mills management had also pledged to stop this illegal practice, but it could not keep its promise, causing a loss of millions of rupees to sugarcane growers. However, the meeting decided to erect signboards to inform the sugarcane growers that short measuring had been stopped at the purchasing centres of the Layyah Sugar Mills.

Chaudhry Muhammad Sadiq, the Layyah Sugar Mills cane manager, informed the meeting that the mills management had so far bought seven million maunds of sugarcane out of 20 million maunds target set for the current crushing season.

He came clean that the Indian variety of sugarcane was measured short on account of its poor quality. He claimed that the mills had to incur heavy losses owing to the purchase of this poor quality sugarcane.