Pay compensation to cane farmers: Jaya

Chennai, Aug 13: Alleging that sugarcane growers in Tamil Nadu were facing a crisis, AIADMK General secretary J Jayalalithaa today urged the DMK government to pay the farmers a compensation of Rs 30,000 per acre.

In a statement here, she said the DMK government, after coming to power in May 2006, had announced in November, a State Advisory Price (SAP) of Rs 1025 per tonne of sugarcane with nine per cent recovery rate. But the announcement remained only on paper as no farmer was benefitted by this, she alleged.

She said the farmers who were to harvest the sugarcane after 12 months, were forced to cut the crops after a delay of four to six months. This resulted in sugarcane becoming dry and losing weight as well as the recovery rate.

Giving details of the price paid by private sugar mills, she said farmers were paid Rs seven to Rs 95 less during 2006-07, compared to previous year, when her government had fixed the SAP at Rs 1014 with nine per cent recovery rate.

She said the farmers ended up paying higher wages for cutting the sugarcane after a delay of four to six months. They also faced problems in offloading the sugarcane at the mills.

The sugarcane crop raised by farmers owing allegience to the ruling DMK were given priority in the mills in offloading, while those of other parties were made to wait for two or three days. This further lad to loss in recovery rate, she also charged.

The farmers were forced to bear the expenses of truck drivers and others also during this period of delay, she said.

The farmers were also adversely affected in price fixation in the absence of proper machines to determine the recovery rate, she said. As most of the sugar mills never paid the money to the farmers immediately, the farmers could not repay their lons in time and were unnecessarily paying interest, she added.

The sugarcane farmers were also put to hardship in the absence of quality power supply, she said and appealed to the government to immediately alleviate the problems faced by them and provide them compensation.

UNI