Pakistan Kissan Movement (PKM) President Hanif Gujjar has blamed the sugar millers at the Rahim Yar Khan area of monopolizing the purchase of sugarcane crop in connivance with the district administration.

He levelled this allegation while talking to a group of farmers in Lahore. He alleged that the administration had started arresting and harassing sugarcane buyers who were giving better rates to farmers so that they can get cane at minimum price below the price fixed by the Government of Punjab at Rs 190 per maund. Sugar mills running in Rahim Yar Khan district still want to buy cane at Rs 180- to Rs 185 per maund. District administration has ordered the people who had come from outside of district Rahim Yar Khan not to buy cane otherwise they would be arrested, he maintained.

Hanif Gujjar made an appeal to the Prime Minister Imran Khan and the Chief Minister Punjab to take action against the district administration of the said district to stop victimizing the farmers on the behest of the PTI government ministers, who are running sugar mills there.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019