Thousands of cane growers are peeved over the non-payment of their last year’s dues of Rs 46 crore.
Balwinder Singh, sarpanch of Jalandhar’s Mali Nangal village, said it had become a habit of the managements of cooperative and private sugar mills to delay the payment of cane growers at least by a year.
“The practice is against government norms, which stipulate that sugar mills should pay up farmers within 14 days of the arrival of the crop. If payment is not made within 14 days, the mills are required to pay interest on the dues. But there is no one to implement the norms,” he said.
Jaswant Singh, Cane Commissioner, told The Tribune the payment of dues was in the pipeline.
Cane variety gets parity
An expected bumper harvest notwithstanding, farmers are also angry over the non-inclusion of widely preferred CO-238 variety in the list of early sown varieties.
Of the 97,000 hectares on which sugarcane was sown this year, the CO-238 variety was sown on 61,682 hectares (63.59 per cent). “The CO-238 variety has the best yield and sown by 80 to 90 per cent of farmers,” said Mukesh Kumar, a sugarcane grower from Jalandhar’s Rani Bhatti village.
It is sown with early varieties from September 20, but categorised as the mid-sown variety allegedly under pressure from the “powerful” sugar mill lobby.
For the past three years, farmers have been protesting for an “equal status” for the CO-238 variety.
After the Punjab Government increased the state-agreed price (SAP) on November 27, the notification of which was issued recently, the early sown varieties would attract Rs 310 per quintal, while mid-sown varieties would fetch Rs 300.
Giving in to protests, the CO-230 variety has been treated on a par with early sown varieties (Rs 310 a quintal) at least for this year, though it has been placed in the mid-sown variety.
“An expert committee will take a final decision on this,” the Cane Commissioner said.
Mukesh, who is also the general secretary of the Doaba Kisan Sangharsh Committee, said: “The sugar quality of Punjab is better than Haryana’s, still Haryana pays SAP of Rs 330 a quintal to its farmers.”