LAHORE, Jan 4: The Punjab government said on Thursday that no mill in the province had stopped cane crushing. Rejecting claims of the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association, food minister Husain Jahanian Gardezi said cane crushing was going on as usual.

APP quoted Punjab PSMA chief Zaka Ashraf as saying that sugar mills had decided to continue cane crushing till Jan 11, the day when the secretarial committee led by Federal Secretary for Food, Agriculture and Livestock Ismail Qureshi would meet in Islamabad to sort out problems facing sugar mills and growers.

Meanwhile, the Kissan Board Pakistan has condemned the suspension of cane crushing by mill owners and described it as a ploy to raise sugar prices.

Board president Sardar Zafar Husain and secretary-general Jam Hazoor Bakhsh said sugar prices were likely to fall in view of a bumper sugarcane crop, exceeding 50 million tons, but the mill owners wanted to pocket profits of billions of rupees like they did the last year.

The mills had suspended crushing to prevent the expected fall in sugar prices in the market in connivance with the government, but both were trying to hoodwink the people, they alleged.

They demanded the government should stop supporting the mills and direct them to resume crushing immediately.

The farmers would stage demonstrations against the mills and the government if crushing was not resumed immediately, they warned. —Reporter