Govt, sugar mills lock horns crushing of canes

The government and sugar mills’ owners are eyeball to eyeball over the crushing of canes as the former has decided to impose Rs5 million fine daily on the mills’ owners not starting the crushing in the first week of November, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Saturday.

Quoting sources, the channel reported that mills’ owners, on the other hand, while terming the government’s order to start crushing before time against ‘national interest’, had argued that the sugarcane crop was not ready in November. Last time, too, the crushing had begun ahead of time, thus incurring the loss of $105.8 million, they reminded.

They said that while on one hand the government was forcing them to sell sugar at Rs70, on the other hand it was causing financial losses to the sugarcane farmers by importing sugar at expensive rates. 

Reporter Waqas Azeem