January 15, 2008	Tuesday	Muharram 05, 1429

HYDERABAD, Jan 14: The Sindh Abadgar Board President Abdul Majeed Nizamani warned on Monday that the growers might go to courts to compel sugar mills to pay them official rate of sugarcane.

He said at a seminar on the problems of sugarcane growers organised by the board in Hadi Bux Rind village near Nasarpur that the provincial government should make the sugar mills pay officially-fixed rate of Rs67 per 40 kilogramme to growers and ensure they also paid them arrears.

He urged the growers not to supply sugarcane to brokers and sugar mills’ agents at prices less than the official rate and lashed out at mill owners for their refusal to pay official rate, delay in payment of arrears, purchase of cane through middlemen at reduced price and faulty weights and measures.

Mr Nizamani said that the board had foiled the mills conspiracy to get the price of sugarcane brought down from Rs67 per 40kg to Rs60 per 40kg in the original notification.

He said that the sugar mills would have to pay them official rate and advised growers not to sell their crop to the mills’ agents at reduced rates and obtain proper receipts from the mills for their produce.

He said that the board had provided detailed and correct statistics on sugarcane to the government and informed it that if the price was reduced even by one single rupee, the consequences would be extremely serious.

He feared that the cultivation of sugarcane in the non-sugarcane growing areas was adversely affecting wheat and cotton crops and leading to acute shortage of water.

He argued that when Punjab was being paid premium on its Basmati rice, good quality cotton and other crops, there was no reason why the cane growers of Sindh should not be paid premium because Sindh's sugarcane produced more than 4kg of additional sugar from one maund of sugarcane when compared to the Punjab’s.

He pointed out that Rs7 billion in the shape of quality premium had been outstanding against mill owners as the mill owners’ appeal was pending in the Supreme Court.

He slammed the middlemen and brokers, who he said were exploiting the growers. When a sugar mill in Ghotki was paying Rs67 per 40kg to the growers on time why couldn’t other mills do the same.

Mr Nizamani warned that if the growers’ problems were not solved they would have no option but to switch over to other crops. If their problems were not solved within a week they would hold meetings in the sugarcane areas to motivate growers to launch a joint struggle for their legal and just rights, he warned.

Wheat could not be cultivated on 300,000 acres due to inordinate delay in the start of crushing season, he said and asked when the country had produced 23.3 million tons of wheat, according to official estimates, and total domestic consumption stood at 20 million tons where were the remaining 3.3 million tons.

He said that he failed to understand why the government did not take action against 50 hoarders whose list had been provided to the prime minister when the wheat flour was being sold for Rs30-35 per kg.

Major (Rtd) Umer Farooq, Mehmood Nawaz Shah, Qazi Abdul Majeed, Mehfooz Ursani, Syed Nadeem Shah and a number of agriculturists also spoke at the seminar.