January 18, 2008	Friday	Muharram 08, 1429

HYDERABAD, Jan 17: The farmers of Tando Mohammad Khan district have threatened to launch a protest movement against sugar mill owners after 10th of Muharram against the decision of mills to not to increase the sugarcane rates.

The farmers have also set up a welfare committee to resolve the problems of cane growers.

Speaking at a news conference at Tando Mohammad Khan on Thursday, Pir Kaleemullah Jan Sarhandi and other farmers said that the mills had defied the orders of the government to pay minimum price of Rs67 per 40kg of sugarcane to growers and the government had totally surrendered before mill owners.

They said that mill owners had fixed the rate of sugar at Rs28-30 per kg but they had refused to pay even the notified rate of sugarcane to the growers. It was injustice, they said.

The farmers said in order to unite the cane growers of the district on one platform, the welfare committee had been constituted and after 10th Muharram, the farmers would launch a protest movement against sugar mill owners.

The farmers accused the mill owners of 20 per cent deduction in payment due to mills’ faulty measurement scales.

DEMO: A group of students of Sindh University, belonging to Sindhi Shagird Tehrik, the student wing of Awami Tehrik, staged a protest demonstration outside the press club here on Thursday against the hoodlums who were harassing new students and extorting money from them.

The student leaders, Arbab Janjhi, Javed Larik and Javed Bhatti alleged that these hoodlums were being patronised by the university administration and extorting money from new students coming from interior of Sindh.

They alleged that on Thursday morning, a group of one dozen thugs had hijacked a university bus near Naseem Nagar Qasimabad and robbed Ayaz Latif, Arbab Ali and Ghulam Mustafa of their cellphones and cash.