Growers welcome sugar commission report

Term it a 'victory' of peasants over sugar barons

HYDERABAD: The Sindh Abadgar Ittehad, a farmers' lobbying group, has welcomed the sugar forensic commission's report and termed the development a victory of the farmers and peasants over the sugar mills.

"The commission's report has established the fact that the sugar mills are a mafia," asserted the Ittehad's president Nawab Zubair Talpur. He further claimed that in light of the commission's report, which was made public on Thursday, the farmers were owed Rs75 billion by the mills and the amount should be paid back to the sugarcane growers.

"The fraud of billions of rupees by the sugar mills has been established. The Supreme Court should take suo motu notice of this," he added.

Talpur claimed that the mills purchase 45 per cent of their required sugarcane through middlemen, without maintaining any records of the transactions. He also contended that the sugar recovery, especially from Sindh's sugarcane, was around 12 per cent but the mills always claimed recovery of nine per cent.

The report has pointed out 'systematic cuts' by the mills, which have caused losses of billions of rupees to the agriculturists. According to the report, the mills underreported sugar sales for years and sold the commodity to unnamed buyers, while carrying out double-booking, underreporting and over-invoicing.

"The cost of sugar production per kilogramme was shown by the mills at Rs51, Rs52 and Rs62 in the years 2017, 2018 and 2019, but the actual cost was Rs38, Rs40 and Rs46, respectively," argued Talpur. He blamed the mills for failing to comply even with the Sindh High Court's order for payment of arrears from 2014 to 2019 to the farmers and the Supreme Court's order for payment of the quality premium.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2020.