THATTA, Jan 11: Farmers’ organisations on Sunday appealed to growers to stop supplying sugarcane to sugar mills from Monday as a move to force them to pay millions of rupees they owe to growers for a couple of years.

Speaking at a press conference, leaders of the Sindh Abadgar Board, Sindh Abadgar Tehrik, Chamber of Agriculture Thatta and Growers Association claimed that Laar Sugar Mills Sujawal, Deewan Sugar Mills, Budho Talpur and many other factories had denied growers payment of cane supplied last year.

The mills have engaged brokers, who are buying cane at much lower price, they said and added that the rate of 100 kg of sugar was Rs3,700 in open market but the factories were still buying the cane at Rs78 per maund against the official rate of Rs81.

They said that under a pre-planned strategy, the factories had stationed long chassis trailers at the entry points of their mills, and were buying cane en route to factories through brokers at low cost, unload them from the trucks and send them to private weighing bridges by reloading the produce onto trailers.

This way, the mills have not only have managed to buy cane at much lower prices but also manoeuvred to cheat the growers in cane’s weight, they said.

Citing an example, the leaders said that the Shah Murad Sugar Mills in Jhoke Sharif had so far procured 8.4 million maunds of sugarcane through its broker-cum-computer operator. They said that the growers who insisted on selling their produce directly to the factories were being discouraged by deducting 20 to 30 maunds from their produce.

They said that four mills of the area owed about Rs500 million to farmers for the past three years but the management was denying them dues payment under one pretext or other.

sca: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture has once again urged the government to direct sugar mill owners to clear outstanding dues of cane growers.

The demand was put forward at a meeting of the chamber held here on Sunday with its senior vice-president Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur in the chair.

The meeting observed that many sugar mills of Sindh had failed to clear the last year’s outstanding dues of cane growers and it was high time the government intervened in the matter and issued strict instructions to the sugar mills to clear the outstanding dues.

Some participants of the meeting complained that many sugar mills were not lifting cane of the growers for crushing as a result of which the cane growers were suffering huge losses.

The meeting observed that the livestock department was doing nothing whatsoever for the livestock owners as neither doctors nor medicines were available in the veterinary hospitals. Similarly, the growers alleged that the agriculture research department was also not providing any assistance to the farming community.

It condemned black-marketing of urea and said that 600,000 tons of imported urea fertilizer was not being judicially distributed among the growers. The meeting urged the Sindh government to take notice of black-marketing of urea.

It demanded that all the canals and waterways should be de-silted to ensure water supply to cane growers.

Those who attended the meeting included, Agha Nasrullah, Mir Imdad Ali Talpur, Sain Bux Rind, Nawaz Ali Samejo.