HYDERABAD, Nov 1: Barring Matiari none of the 34 sugar mills in the province started crushing as per the Sindh government notification under which they were supposed to begin crushing on Thursday (Nov 1).

This has caused great unrest among sugarcane farmers who are worried about sowing wheat crop during Rabi.

Sindh government hasn’t even issued notification for fixing of indicative price of sugarcane till Thursday.

Sindh Cane Commissioner Zahid Memon is avoiding to come on record whether he has initiated any action against the defaulter mills. He is said to be in Karachi. When contacted over cellphone in the evening, he avoided talking to Dawn. He said that he was with agriculture minister and could be approached after an hour.

Till filing of this report at 9.30pm he was not willing to share details of crushing season.

According to reports, only Al-Noor, Bawani, Dewan, Mehran, Sanghar, Ranipur, Seri and Habib sugar mills have fired their boilers.

It is only Matiari Sugar Mill that had started crushing around a fortnight back following talks with growers of the area. But the rest of mills are yet to begin crushing. After boilers are fired, it still takes mills 10 days to start crushing.

On the other hand Sindh chapter chairman of the Pakistan Sugar Mills Association Aslam Farooque is also reportedly abroad.

The growers are extremely worried about sowing wheat. Being an ideal time, some growers have started sowing the crop.

Farmers believe that if they miss sowing of wheat in November they may face a poor per-acre yield if sown in December.

The Sindh government hasn’t even notified the sugarcane price officially. Reports indicate a summary for fixing Rs172 per 40kg for cane has been floated by the secretary agriculture.

Punjab is said to have fixed Rs170 per 40kg for cane and Sindh’s price is a bit higher because of higher sucrose recovery percentage.

Growers said that they are in a fix. “Until cane is harvested we will have to provide water to the crop which can otherwise be used for sowing of wheat and if we don’t provide water to cane it will lose its weight and that will mean a monetary loss to us,” said Abdul Majeed Nizamani, President of Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB).