Rice millers stop milling paddy in Punjab

Fatehgarh Sahib, Oct 23 (UNI) A meeting of Punjab Rice Millers Association here today decided to stop the milling of paddy till November 7, alleging indifferent attitude of the Centre and the Punjab government towards them.

Addressing a press conference after the meet, Association president Tarsem Saini said the millers had been agitated over some time against the government's decision to claim old recoveries worth lakhs of rupees from rice mills pertaining to gunny bags, custom milling and payment of paddy evaporation at the rate of paddy.

''The rice millers of the state are against the indifferent attitude of Union government as well as Punjab government so we have decided to stop milling of government paddy till November 7,'' he said.

He said that if their genuine demands were not met by November 7, they would intensify their protest.

Mr Saini said the state government had failed to implement the conceded demands of the Association. He said delegation of the rice millers had met the Punjab Chief Minister earlier whne the latter had agreed to their demands. These, however, were not implemented so far, he said.

He appealed to the Chief Minister to implement the already conceded demands and abolish the sales tax on byproducts so that the millers could run their units smoothly.

He alleged that the role of Food Corporation of India (FCI) was also not fair towards rice millers.

UNI XC PS VD DB2007