Sindh mills buying Punjab sugarcane at lower than official rate

LAHORE: The Sindh sugar mills have started buying sugarcane from Rahim Yar Khan and other border districts of Punjab at lower than the official rate, as the crushing season is yet to start in the Punjab province.

The Sindh mills have started the sugarcane crushing season already, and appointed cane purchase agents and installed weighing bridges (kandas). The agents are purchasing sugarcane for Rs180/40kg on cash payment against the Punjab government fixed rate of Rs200/40kg. The purchase agents are openly flouting orders of the provincial government of purchase of sugarcane on cane purchase receipts (CPR) in order to document and establish the trail of the crushing season this year. Further, minimum cane price is also not being ensured to the farmers as well.

Hanif Gujjar, a cane grower from the south Punjab, who also represents Pakistan Kissan Movement as the secretary general, said that in Rahim Yar Khan, middlemen/cane buyers from Sindh had installed their ‘kandas’ [weighing bridges] and set up their purchase centres. They were flouting the Punjab government decision and no CPR is being issued to growers. The Punjab government has specifically announced that the CPR of each purchase, whether it is middlemen or mills, should be issued at the rate of Rs200/40 kg.

He said the sugarcane purchase agents were buying commodity for Rs180/40 kg instead of the government rate. He said farmers were very upset because they were bound to sell cane at whatever price the middlemen offer them.

He said the middlemen were purchasing cane in huge quantities and loading it onto long vehicles/ trucks for transportation to the mills in Sindh. Hanif Gujjar asked the Punjab government to take notice of the illegal practice and take action against the sugarcane mafia fleecing the growers of district Rahim Yar Khan.

However, Cane Commissioner Punjab Zaman Wattoo said no such sugarcane transportation activity had been brought into the notice of authorities concerned. He said instructions had been issued to the border districts administrations to keep check on it.