KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that his government was making all-out efforts to protect the interests of the growers and he wants a workable resolution to end the deadlock on price of sugarcane.
He said this while presiding over a meeting of sugarcane growers here at the Chief Minister House, according to a statement issued here on Friday.
The meeting was attended by Minister for Home & Agriculture Sohail Anwar Siyal, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput, Secretary Agriculture Sajjid jamal ABro, DG Agriculture Extension Hidayatullah Chhajjro, Noor Mohammad Baloch DG Agriculture Research, Agha Zahiruddin Cane Commissioner and the growers were Syed Nadeem Shah, Mohammad Nawaz Shah, Qabool Mohammad Khatian, Zahid Bhurgri, Nabi Bux Sathio, Nawab Zubair Talpur, Sharif Nizamani and Khalid Masood.
The chief minister said that he and his party have always worked with grower to get them better prices of their crops. Adding that the sugar mill owners were of the view that they could not start crushing because they had surplus sugar of last year in their godowns.
The Cane Commissioner told the chief minister that there were 38 sugar mills in the province, of them six were not going to operate this year and 32 have started crushing.
They are purchasing sugarcane and growers were selling them at Rs130-RS140, the price varies from district to district, he said.
The growers said that the price of Rs130 to Rs140 does not suit them. The growers accepted that some political parties were trying to capitalize on their protests.
"We are not a political party and we are only struggling for the rights of small, medium and big growers so that they can get better price of their crop," they added.
The growers said that this year sugarcane has been cultivated over an area of 700,000 acres and production would be around 420 tons of sugarcane.
They proposed the chief minister to announce a subsidy of Rs12/40 kg for growers and asked the millers to pay Rs170 per 40 kg to the growers.
On this the chief minister said that he would consider their proposal if they show some flexibility on the price of the cane.
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