Tamil Nadu

Farmers seek government grant

VILLUPURAM: While welcoming the budgetary proposal to allow co-generation in 17 cooperative sugarmills in the State at an estimated cost of Rs. 925 crore, the Tamil Nadu Vivasayigal Sangam has called for government’s share also in this regard.

General secretary of the association T. Elumalai told The Hindu that the move was contemplated to bail out the cooperative mills that had accumulated losses to the tune of Rs. 1,200 crore over the years.

Allowing the sugarmills to take to co-generation and ethanol production would wipe out the losses and make them turn around, he said. However, the State government had put the onus solely on the farmers to build up the funds of Rs. 925 crore.

Hence, ever since the beginning of the current sugarcane season, the sugarmills had started deducting Rs. 100 a tonne of sugarcane supplied. Mr. Elumalai said that the share of the farmers and the government in the cooperative mills was 52:48 and the same ratio should be followed in terms of mobilising resources for co-generation too.

The association had recently given a representation in this regard to Atulya Misra, Commissioner for Sugar. It had also sought creation of a “labour pool” to ensure deployment of adequate workforce and payment of reasonable wages.

Mr. Elumalai said that the wages for harvesting sugarcane had gone up to Rs. 480 a tonne and even at this rate it was difficult to get the required workforce. Hence, the government had offered an easy solution of inducting harvesting machinery in the cooperative sugarmills at the cost of Rs. 12 crore.

Mechanisation would render lakhs of farm hands redundant and such a development would create industrial unrest. Therefore, a labour pool would be the viable media to overcome the problem, he said.

The association opposed the move to let out the Pandiarajapuram sugarmill (in the public sector at Dindigul) and the Madhurandagam cooperative sugarmill on a long lease to private parties.

Mr. Elumalai said that the private parties were keen on grabbing the property of these mills whose current market value was in the order of Rs. 600 crore to Rs. 700 crore respectively.

After the closure of the Arunachalam sugarmill at Tiruvannamali in 2001, the farmers were forced to divert sugarcane to six other sugarmills, but the latter were exploiting the situation by offering only Rs. 670 a tonne instead of the government fixed price of Rs. 1,025 a tonne. The association had urged the government to set right the anomaly, Mr. Elumalai said.

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