PESHAWAR: Sugar cane growers on Saturday expressed concern over the government’s failure to implement the Supreme Court’s order regarding payment of the sugar cane price to the farmers and warned to agitate on Tuesday if the mills owners did not clear their dues at the rate of Rs180 per 40kg.

Talking to mediapersons here, the leaders of Peshawar Farmers Alliance said that in Sindh and Punjab provinces the sugar mills owners were paying from Rs180 to Rs190 for 40 kilogrammes of sugar cane to the farmers, while in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa the growers had been left at the mercy of millers.

They said that the millers were looting the farmers at free will as the price fixed by the Supreme Court four years ago was yet to be implemented.

Say the govt should implement SC order on crop price

They said that agriculture was the most neglected sector because the farmers were not given any incentive or financial support to increase production.

About the growing prices of fertilisers and agricultural tools, the farmers said that this sector had never been a priority of the government and thus the farmers had been switching to other professions.

“We have set a three-day deadline to the millers to clear our dues in line with the decision of Supreme Court otherwise the farmers will start observing sit-in outside Khazana Sugar Mills, Peshawar, from January 15,” the alliance president Arbab Jameel Ahmed told this correspondent.

He said that the millers in Dera Ismail Khan had agreed to pay Rs173.5 per 40kg to the farmers, but in Peshawar, Mardan and Charsadda the millers were not paying attention to the farmers’ demands.

He urged NAB to probe into the matter and take action against those involved in exploitation of the farmers.

Another alliance leader and former MPA, Abdur Rehman, said that the government should provide incentives to the farmers to improve the agriculture sector. He said that the sugar cane board had also failed to play its due role in fixation of the price. He asked the government to provide interest-free loans to the farmers on easy instalments.

Another leader of growers, Israrullah Khan, said that the government should take immediate steps for implementing the court decision so that the farmers could continue growing sugar cane as the confusion was causing delay in cultivation of wheat in Peshawar.

He said that the agriculture department should play its role to encourage the farmers by providing them with quality seeds and necessary training so that they could increase production. He also called for construction of farm-to-market roads to help farmers transport their produce to the markets easily.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2019