Sugar mills denying dues to growers, PA told

LAHORE :The Punjab government faced severe embarrassment Friday in Punjab Assembly when the claims of Food Minister Bilal Yasin that sugar millers had paid 99 percent dues of sugarcane growers were refuted by the chairman of the House Committee which was formed to look into the complaints regarding non-payment of dues by sugar millers.

Chairman of the House Committee on cane growers complaints, Javed Alauddin Sajid, told the House during the question hour that sugar millers had been holding a huge backlog of payments towards poor growers and even the House Committee was helpless to ensure the payments since sugar millers had been defying the government orders and had refused to negotiate with the House Committee and relevant officials.

The issue came up when Bilal Yasin told the House that 99 percent dues of sugarcane growers had been paid and only Rs570 million were outstanding. This claim received strong reaction not only from opposition members but also from the Speaker Rana Iqbal Khan who supported the reports that sugar millers had not been clearing the payments of growers causing serious problems for poor families. The opposition members drew attention of the chair towards the fact that the reply given by the food department to the questioner also denied the minister’s claims and stated that over Rs11 billion had been outstanding towards the sugar millers who had been denying those payments to poor growers.

Javed Alauddin told the House that the sugar millers had given bogus cheques to the growers as hardly any of those could be encashed.

The bulk of the outstanding dues were towards the sugarcane growers of Kasur District who had been helplessly protesting the matter. The minister could not find anything to satisfy the members and the Chair. On the demands of the opposition, the Speaker handed over the matter to the Standing Committee for probe and action.

The minister informed the House to a question that all the substandard and injurious to health ingredients of food items were completely banned, including the loose or unpacked oil which can be mixed in substandard milk. Similarly, he said, the sale of tea whitener prepared from chemicals was also banned.

Opposition member from Southern Punjab, Aslam Islam drew minister’s attention towards the delay of sugarcane crushing in Bahawalpur and Muzaffargarh Districts because of the closure of mills there. He demanded the government to order immediate crushing of the cane and make the closed mills functional by negotiating with the millers so that the growers’ problems and loss could be minimised.   

Later, while opening the general debate on price control of food items in the province, the provincial minister Sh Alauddin told the House that the government banned the import of vegetables from India this year to protect the interests of the local growers; however, he could not satisfy the questions as to why the prices of tomato and onion got out of control. He said the sudden rise in tomato prices was due to the destruction of tomato crop in Balochistan which was infected with a virus. He said the onions faced price-hike due to the same reason, but claimed that the prices of these two items were under control now.

The minister defended the government policy of recently imposed regulatory duty on a number of items, claiming that all the items subjected to regulatory tax were not used by the poor or common man. He said no poor man could eat apples imported from New Zealand which cost around Rs500 per kg and those who buy those apples could also pay the additional tax. The minister demanded the government to impose a 25 percent tax on late night eating in hotels to boost its income.

Participating in the debate, the Leader of the Opposition Mian Mehmoodur Rasheed said the nation was suffering because of failed economic policies of federal finance minister and those policies forced the government to present mini-budgets after mini budgets.

He said the federal government had been claiming of breaking the begging bowl down but instead it had widened the size of the begging bowl and obtained a record of foreign loans to cover up their failed financial policies. He alleged that the government was fleecing the poor of their meagre resources by imposing huge new taxes without getting them approved by the parliament.