October 23, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 10, 1428

HYDERABAD, Oct 22: A total of eight sugar mills in the province ignited their boilers on Monday to get ready for crushing sugarcane starting tentatively in the first week of November amid growers’ demands for raising the official rate of the crop from Rs67 per 40 kilogramme to Rs70-80.

According to information obtained from the cane commissioner’s office 21 sugar mills were yet to start boilers for crushing and issue indents to growers.

The eight sugar mills including Ansari, Al-Habib, Al-Noor, Khairpur, Mirza, Ranipur, Sakrand and Al-Abbas will begin crushing in November, said a notification issued by the secretary of agriculture.

It said that the mills were to start crushing on Oct 1 but delayed it once again after the owners’ started negotiations with growers and government officials about fixing date.

It will take the mills around 15 to 20 days to start crushing. So far harvesting of sugarcane has not begun because indents are yet to be issued to growers.

Our Nawabshah correspondent adds: Al-Habib Sugar Mills in Nawabshah, Sakrand Sugar Mills in Qazi Ahmed and Al-Noor Sugar Mills in Shahpur Jahanian ignited their boilers over past couple of days and were in the process of checking machines before the start of crushing season.

The resident director of Al-Habib Sugar Mills, Mohammed Yousuf, said that they already informed the growers, transporters and labourers that the mills would start crushing on Nov 2 and the labour would start reaching the mills by the end of current month.

The mills crushed approximately 17.5 million maunds cane last year and targeted to improve upon it during the current season in view of increased cane production in the area, he said.

The director project of Al-Noor Sugar Mills said that the mills had lighted boilers and would start crushing on Nov 2. The mills had been breaking records for crushing more cane in Sindh for past three years and had thus far crushed around 20 million maunds, he said.

The mills required at least 200,000 maunds cane daily. If it failed to get the required quantity from Sindh it would purchase cane from the Punjab, he said but hoped the mills would not need to buy cane from Punjab as there were reports of 30 per cent increase in cane sowing in Sindh this year.

Masood Ahmed, personnel officer to the general manager of Sakrand Sugar Mills also confirmed that the mills boilers had been ignited and added that the crushing would start on time as per schedule. The mills would issue indents to the growers three to four days before crushing, he said.

A number of representatives of growers’ bodies, meanwhile, protested against the government rates with the president of Nawabshah chapter of Sindh Small Growers Association, Hakim Ali Khaskheli, saying that the official rate was much less than the expenses incurred on production of sugarcane.

He said that the rate should be at least Rs73 per 40kg because the percentage of recovery from cane in Sindh was much better than that of Punjab, and appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan to take notice outstanding amount on account of quality premium the mills owed to growers.

Syed Zahid Hussain Shah, general secretary of the Nawabshah chapter of Sindh Abadgar Board, said that taking into consideration raise in the prices of other agricultural products and fuel during the period the cane’s price should be fixed at Rs80 per maund.

Syed Pir Shah, a grower, said that the rate of cane was not increasing with the raise in the prices of inputs like seed and fuel. The mills owners were non-cooperative because they believed the growers would at any rate supply them their produce at their rates, he said.

The growers were almost forced to sow cane after the expected bumper crop of cotton was badly harmed by pest attacks, he said and demanded that the government should fix the cane rate at Rs75 per maund.