MARDAN, Jan 7 The growers have stopped supply of cane to local sugar mills due to its high price in the open market.

A survey, conducted by this correspondent, revealed that the growers have stopped supply of cane to the Premier Sugar Mills and Distillery Mardan because they thought that the rates of the mill were lower.

Khalid Khan, a grower, said that he would never supply cane to the mill because it had fixed Rs100 per 50kg while dealers purchased it from him at Rs130. “The dealers purchase the crop directly from the fields unlike the mills,” he said and added that they would prefer the open market rather than the mills.

Another grower, Attaur Rehman, said that the prices of gur (raw sugar) reached up to Rs6,500 per 150kg, which was higher than the prices of the mills. He said in the current year cane had a marvellous recovery and only 34 mounds produced 350kg gur which earned about Rs6,500 while the mills offered them only Rs3,400.

He said that cane was a hard crop and needed a lot of water, fertilisers, the seeds were expensive and so were the labour while the mill prices could not cover expenditures of the crop, therefore, the mills should fix at least Rs200 per 50kg only then the growers would supply cane to the mills.

Mardan district had two sugar mills Frontier Sugar Mills (FSM) and Premier Sugar Mills (PSM). The FSM was closed about a year back due to the non-supply of cane while the PSM is running but not regularly. The management of the FSM had sacked over 100 employees who recently staged protest demonstrations against the sacking. An official disclosed that the PSM was in 'hiccups' due to non-sufficient supply of cane to the mill and it was difficult to be operative even in the month of January. —Correspondent