THATTA, Dec 1: Thatta District Nazim Syed Shafqat Hussain Shah Shirazi has threatened to stop supply of sugarcane to the four sugar mills of his district from Monday (tomorrow) if the managements of these mills did not implement flat rate of sugarcane.

Talking to Dawn the Nazim said that his repeated contacts with the sugar mill owners had not yielded positive results, consequently over 20,000 growers of the district had reached a consensus to set ablaze their sugarcane crops but not supply even a single sugarcane stick to Shah Murad, Deewan, Al-Asif and Laar Sugar Mills of Thatta district.

He said that these mills were procuring sugarcane out of the district at the rate of Rs53 per maund plus transport charges but the local farmers were being paid Rs45 per maund minus transport charges.

He said that the mill owners instead of paying heed to local growers’ five-year old demand of enhancing the sugarcane price by Rs10 per maund in comparison to outer supply due to freshness and rich sucrose in local cane, were still playing havoc by harming financial interests of local growers.

He disclosed that some 400 square kilometres area between Sujawal and Hassanpur was the bumper producer of sugarcane, which shared a considerable ratio of 57.5 million maunds of sugarcane crushed during the crushing season 1999-2000, resulting in nine per cent percent average recovery of sugar in Thatta based factories.

Mr Shirazi alleged that the mill owners were also reluctant to install core sampler machine in their factories to assess the sucrose percentage of individual supply with a motive to avoid variable excessive payments to growers of their supplied cane.

The Nazim appealed the growers community of the province to cooperate in boycotting sugarcane supply to these factories to build up pressure.

PROBE: The IG police Sindh, taking notice of the news about parading naked in public a suspect by Sujawal police on November 25, has ordered spot inquiry by the AIG police Sarwar Jamal.