Growers’ body concerned over govt’s failure to notify sugar cane rate despite start of crushing season

HYDERABAD: The Sindh Abadgar Board’s (SAB) monthly meeting was held in Hyderabad on Sunday.

SAB President Mehmood Nawaz Shah present the agenda points that included paddy, cotton and sugar cane rates, and right bank canals’ irrigation water problem in upper Sindh rice belt.

The board members said farmers could not get profit due to reduction in paddy rate this year when the value of rupee had increased.

They said that no regulatory framework had been made by the government regarding the cutting of paddy by rice mills. They said no rules governed the rice mills owners due to which they exploited the farmers causing decrease in the latter’s profits.

Growers said this year, paddy and cotton production had decreased by 50 per cent compared to 2023 due to the effects of climate change.

The SAB president said it had happened for the first time in 35 years that the Sindh government had not issued the official rate notification of sugar cane despite the beginning of the crushing season of sugar mills, due to which the sugar mills had begun exploiting the situation.

In the meeting, the grower members of the right bank said that due to the breach of the gate at the Sukkur Barrage, water could not be supplied to the Rice and Dadu canals as usual, which caused damage to the paddy crops and reduced production. The government did not provide any relief there to help the farmers, they said.