PESHAWAR, Dec 29: The NWFP chapter of Kissan Board Pakistan on Friday rejected the government’s decision of imposing tax on export of molasses and announced that the farmers would march towards Islamabad to press for its withdrawal.

“We will resist the decision and we will not bow before the sugar mafia which has conspired against 70 per cent growers of the country to retain their monopoly on the market,” provincial president of the board Murad Ali Khan said at a news conference.

He alleged that the sugar mill owners were exploiting the growers by purchasing sugarcane at low prices.

“The sugar mills are paying only Rs65 for 40kg of sugarcane, which does not even meet the cost of the crop,” he said.

He said the imposition of tax on gur export would compel the growers not to produce molasses and sell the crop to the mills on the fixed price.

He rejected the notion that growers of the NWFP were exporting molasses to Afghanistan and Central Asia, saying that tribesmen were taking the product across the Afghan border on a very low scale.

“Customs officials at Torkham border illegally charged Rs65,000 for each truck carrying molasses to Afghanistan,” Mr Khan alleged.

If the government was interested in imposing the tax, it should make arrangements for large-scale export of molasses to Central Asia and Europe, he said, adding that the growers could not be compelled to accept the levy just to benefit the ‘sugar mafia’.

The farmers’ leader also alleged that instead of protecting the growers’ interests, the Tobacco Board had become a tool of multinational companies which exploited them. “The tobacco companies have been given the right to fix the prices and the growers having no option except selling the crop at very low rates to them,” he said.

He said the growers would not trust the board unless their true representatives were included in it.

“The board has failed to produce a new quality of tobacco crop in spite of spending millions of rupees on research,” he maintained.

He urged the government to prepare a new agriculture policy giving maximum incentives to the growers, saying that otherwise the sector would suffer badly.

“We will have no other choice but to abandon tobacco cultivation if the multination companies continue exploiting the growers,” he said.

He urged the MNAs and MPAs representing Mardan, Swabi, Peshawar, Charsadda and Buner to pressure the government for reverting its decision of levying tax on molasses export.—PPI