SANGHAR, Dec 19: The Sindh Abadgar Board and the Small Growers Association have alleged that sugar mills have been closed to deprive farmers of a fair price for their produce.

Talking to journalists on Monday, Samo Khan Dahri of the SAB and Hassan Askari, general secretary of the SGA, regretted that every year when sugarcane crop matured in October, the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association become active and started manoeuvring to deprive farmers of a fair price. They said crushing of sugarcane was delayed on one or the other pretext. This year too, they added, the Sindh government had first fixed the date of cane crushing at Oct 1, then at Oct 15 and so on but some mills started crushing in the last week of November and the majority in December. They said that due to delay in crushing, weight of sugarcane decreased.

They said a bumper sugarcane crop had been achieved in the 2003-04 season. However, they said, farmers who wanted to supply sugarcane at the official rate of Rs41 per 40 kilograms were not issued indents. Farmers had to deal with brokers who purchased cane at Rs35 to Rs37 per 40kgs. Payment was delayed to those who got an indent and supplied sugarcane directly to mills, they added.

They said millers owed billions of rupees to farmers but dues were paid only to those who agreed to get payments without premium.

They said farmers also suffered losses due to faulty weighing bridges and scales and unlawful deduction in weight. They said that while calculating the price, the main by-products, baggas and moleres, were also not taken into consideration. They said the cost of sugarcane was recovered from these by-products.

The farmers’ representatives demanded that the rate of sugarcane should be fixed commensurate with rise in prices of agricultural inputs.

They said prices of rice, paddy, chilli and onion had also decreased considerably and farmers were not able even to cover the cost of production. They said cotton traders were deducting 4 to 6 kilograms per 40kgs on the pretext of moisture, dust etc but no one was pay heed to miseries of farmers.

Representatives of sugar mills could not be contacted.

REINSTATEMENT: About 114 employees of the education department, including high school, primary, junior teachers, drawing teachers, PTI and other employees have been reinstated by the district nazim.