The helpless sugarcane growers of NWFP are looking towards the upcoming governments at both federal and provincial levels for coming to their rescue and help reducing the woes.
The payment of the officially fixed price of the sugarcane to the growers and delay in the starting of the crushing season had angered the farming community, resorting them to take roads against the apathy of the governments on one hand and highhandedness of the sugar millers on the other.
According to growers' organisations the sugar millers first deliberately delayed the beginning of the crushing season on one or other pretext to get maximum benefits of the government through blackmail. The millers are earlier made hue and cry over the price of sugarcane fixed last year by the government for a period of three years.
The millers earlier intentionally delayed the crushing season, but then elected governments refused to budge to their demands. However, the caretaker set up established for holding elections in the country succumbed to their pressure in first making cut in the price of sugar cane in Sindh, followed by Punjab and last in NWFP, where the price was cut by Rs 10/- by 40 kilogram of the commodity.
Later, the millers once again violated the new price in the name of the shortage of ingredients in the crop, which they said had resulted in severe cold and frost during the months of December and January. The farmers associations in the province are alleging that the sugar millers now paying merely Rs 25 to Rs 30/-per 40 kilogram of the commodity on the pretext of the shortage of ingredients in the crop.
The latest anti-sugarcane growers' development is reportedly refusal of Premier Sugar Mills, the biggest mill of not only of Pakistan, but also of South Asia to issue 'Indents' (Purchase order) to the growers. The management of the sugar mill had closed gates for all types of transport carrying sugarcane to the mill.
The growers associations had launched protest movement against the treatment given to them by both government and sugar millers. They are demanding fixation of the price of the commodity in proportion to many fold increase in the prices of fertilisers and wages of the labourers.
The staging of protest demonstrations in different parts of the sugarcane growing districts of the province have become a routine matter. The growers had demanded the intervention of the government in the matter otherwise; they had also threatened to put the standing sugarcane crop in the province on fire and boycott of growing the crop in future.
The growers are also blaming the millers for intentional delay in the starting of crushing season (December 2007), which badly affected wheat sowing on the land vacated from sugarcane crop.
The sugar millers had not only deprived the farmer of the fixed price, but had also affected the sowing of wheat crop in the province. "There might be less wheat production during 2008 crop season because of the factor as the area sown under wheat is lower compared to the preceding crop season (2007)," Khan Faraz, a grower told on contact.