HYDERABAD, Dec 19: The general secretary of Sugarcane Growers Association, Sindh, and PPP MNA from Mirpurkhas, Syed Qurban Ali Shah, has warned that cane growers would come out on the roads if sugar mill owners did not start the crushing season soon.

He said this while speaking at a press conference at the press club on Thursday.

The general secretary of SGA said sugar mill owners were not arrested for violating the Sugarcane Act and failed to pay outstanding dues of growers with the mark-up according to bank rates within a week.

He warned that growers would hold processions and stage sit-ins on the roads and lock mill owners in their rooms.

Mr Qurban said that while hundreds of growers had been imprisoned under the Land Revenue Act because of their failure to return bank loans of Rs50,000 to Rs100,000, no action was being taken against sugar mill owners who had not returned bank loans of over Rs600 million each. He demanded that their mills should be confiscated.

He said that these mill owners had not spent a single paisa at the time of installation of mills and these mills had been functioning on bank loans.

He wondered why the mill owners had not been arrested for violating the Sugarcane Act to start the crushing season on Oct 15 when the Cane Commissioner of Sindh had publicly announced that the punishment for not starting the crushing season on time was a two-year imprisonment.

Mr Qurban regretted that the federal minister for industries and production, Mr Liaquat Jatoi, who had convened a meeting of sugar mill owners and growers at Karachi on Dec 17, was supporting mill owners without hearing the point of view of the growers.

He said the records for the last five years was a witness to the fact that sugar mills of Sindh had always started crushing season in October but this year they had declared a lock out in mills and were blackmailing the government as well as the growers.

Elaborating his point, he said that sugar mill owners were claiming that they had a surplus stock of 250,000 tons and they were incurring losses.

He said on this pretext they were demanding exemption from payment of loans and grant of fresh loans.

He said mill owners also wanted that payment of tens of millions of rupees regarding GST should be deferred, and added that this was sheer blackmail.

The MNA, while referring to the plight of the people of Sindh, said that the former finance minister had claimed that 35 per cent population of the country was living below the poverty line but according to the former Sindh finance minister, Dr Hafeez Shaikh, 81 per cent of the population of Sindh, which generated the lion’s share of income for the country, was living below the poverty line.

Mr Qurban said that sugar mill owners had deceived the government about the expected shortfall in sugar production in the year 2000-2001 and imported 528,651 tons of duty-free raw sugar and earned windfall profits of tens of millions of rupees.

He said, later, the mill owners increased the sugar price by misguiding the government and earned Rs12 billion.

He said the main objectives of sugar mill owners in delaying the crushing season was to purchase sugarcane at a throwaway price and to get maximum recovery from the sugarcane as in December the sucrose recovery will be three per cent more.

He recalled that last year sugar mill owners had purchased sugarcane at the rate of Rs60 per 40kg but presently they were not prepared to pay even Rs43 per 40kg.

The general secretary of Sugarcane Growers Association said that in fact 27 mills of Sindh had formed a cartel and they were defying orders of the government.

Mr Qurban said that the State Bank of Pakistan had allowed sugar mills to give advances to growers at reduced rate of interest but the mill owners had misappropriated this amount and committed fraud worth billions of rupees by giving advances on fictitious NICs.

He said an amount of Rs400 million of growers remained outstanding against sugar mills since the last many years.

He demanded that this amount should be paid with interest.

He claimed that the US and the European Union had given a subsidy of $300 billion to their growers for increasing exports, but in Pakistan the agriculture sector was being destroyed.