KARACHI, Nov 29: Sugar mills in Sindh could not come into operation owing to inadequate supply of sugarcane where growers are facing with shortage of manpower badly needed for the haulage of cane from farms to factories.
The heating up of boilers by Sindh sugar mills is late by around one month and if the situation continues this may deteriorate the existing precarious demand and supply situation in the country and could also give birth some problems to the government.
The monthly demand of sugar is little over 0.3m tons whereas around 0.5m tons of refined sugar stocks are available. Therefore, further delay in operational activities of Sindh sugar mills could create demand and supply problems of the commodity.
A spokesman of Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (PSMA), Sindh Zone, on Tuesday said that presently four mills were operating in the province. However, due to short supply of sugarcane these mills would have to close down their operations in a short period after heating up their boilers.
The 28 sugar mills in Sindh prepared themselves for timely operations for the new crushing season (2005-06), however, keeping in view inadequate workforce with farmers to harvest sugarcane and to transport the crop from farms to factories the mills have to stagger beginning of their operations, the spokesman added.
He said that Seri Sugar Mills heated up its boiler from October 23 through November 2, 2005, but on receiving short supply of cane it had to stop uneconomic activity.
Similarly, he said that three other sugar mills namely Sanghar Sugar Mills, Habib Sugar Mills, Al-Noor Sugar Mills and some more attempted to get steadily on stream but had to stop working due to non-availability of sugarcane.
The spokesman said that non-supply of sugarcane had been brought to the notice of the relevant Sindh government functionaries and consequential compulsion to stop working after a couple of days by each sugar mills that tried to commence crushing had to suffer losses.
He said that sugar mills could not afford high cost of furnace oil in place of ‘bagasse’ because of short supply of cane which deprives the units from economically use of indigenous fuel in place of furnace oil.
The spokesman urged the Sindh government authorities to help the sugar mills to overcome this problem and have a smooth processing and sugar production season (2005-06).
He pointed out that each passing day was increasing cost of production and was bound to be a serious cause of considerable loss to Sindh sugar industry which was already under financial constraints.
