MUZAFFARGARH: Farmers continued their sit-in and protest camp outside the main gate of the Haseeb Waqas Sugar Mills for the third day on Monday to stop the sugar movement outside the mill and demanded payment of their dues.

They alleged that after the closure of the mill on the court order the mill administration was selling the sugar while they were holding the sit-in to stop its sale. They demanded the sugar mill that if it could not give them payment, it should let them take the sugar stored in the warehouses as payment of their dues and they would sell it themselves. However, the mill did not agree with them.

On the other hand, Deputy Commissioner Saif Anwar Jappa held a meeting with the mill administration and the famers in his office on Monday.

Talking to Dawn about the meeting, the DC said he had called three sugar mills administrations and asked them to take sugarcane from the farmers of Jatoi tehsil on an equal ratio because they had a bumper crop of sugarcane this year. He said he had asked the labour officials and assistant commissioners of the tehsil to sit along at weighing scale to ensure that mill officials did not commit any anomaly.

Mr Jappa said Sheikhoo Sugar Mill and Fatima Sugar Mill of Kot Addu and Tandianwala Sugar Mill of Muzaffargarh would take the sugarcane of the farmers and give them payment within 15 days while the Haseeb Waqas Sugar Mills had been asked to clear payments today (Tuesday).

DC asks three other mills to buy farmers’ remaining crop

Talking to Dawn, the administration of Haseeb Waqas Sugar Mills said the mill was still closed and the payments would be distributed when it would be opened.

While Khwaja Farhan Raza, a farmer, alleged that the mill administration had claimed that it was helpless and the farmers could not be paid until the review of the court decision against the mill. He said thousands of acres of land of sugarcane was waiting for crushing in the field but now they were now thinking to make gur of it.

Ghulam Sabir, another farmer, said the mill had to pay him Rs10m and his labour was waiting for wages.

Haseeb Waqas Sugar Mills was closed by court order while dozens of tractor-trolleys were waiting outside the mill. The farmers had warned of taking sugar bags from the mill warehouses by force if their payments were not made.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2017