HYDERABAD, Aug 26: A large number of growers from Nawabshah, Naushahro Feroze and Hyderabad held demonstrations outside the cane commissioner’s office and the press club on Tuesday and warned that if the government did not solve their problems, they would launch a province-wide movement and finally stage a sit-in outside the Sindh Assembly.

They were protesting against non-payment of dues by sugar mills, sale of spurious seed and pesticides and shortage of irrigation water. The protest was organised by the Sindh Abadgar Tehrik.

Dewan Arumal, Gul Hassan Keerano, Teerath Mal, Ghulam Fareed Kalhoro and Dr Sarwar Bughio said that the sugar mills had failed to pay official rate of sugarcane to growers during 2007 and 2008 and withheld billions of rupees they owed to growers.

They said that mills already owed to growers millions of rupees as trust from 1992 to 2002, which had not yet been paid. In Nawabshah alone, the Habib Sugar Mills and Sakrand Sugar Mills had still not paid a difference of Rs3 per 40 kilogram for 2003 and 2004 while the Al-Noor Sugar Mills had paid the difference only to influential landlords, they said.

They alleged that the mills were issuing indents in the names of their own employees to deprive farmers of actual rate of sugarcane and wondered why the mills were not being prosecuted for violation of Sugarcane Act.

They said the fertiliser was being openly sold in black-market and the sale of spurious seeds and pesticides had ruined the crops of poor growers.

The growers’ protest meeting adopted a number of resolutions, demanding that the mills should start crushing from Oct 1, illegal zoning system introduced by the mills should be abolished, middle man system should be declared illegal and the growers’ dues of Rs3 billion for 2007-08 should be paid immediately.

The meeting said that the case of quality premium involving billions of rupees should be pursued and justice should be restored to growers. The indents should be issued in farmers’ names and not in the names of the mills employees and the official rate of Rs67 per 40 kg as per government notification of July 2, 2008 should be paid to growers, the meeting said.

The meeting demanded that the mills owners who were violating the law should be prosecuted, availability of fertiliser should be ensured at official rate and dealership of the people who were selling the fertiliser in black-market should be cancelled.

The meeting demanded that desilting should be carried out of water channels, water should be supplied to the tail-end of channels and rotation program should be done away with.