Chennai: The state government on Thursday assured the agitating farmers that it would take steps to immediately disperse the arrears of the cooperative sugar mills to sugarcane farmers while private sugar mills would be asked to pay the pending arrears as per the Centre’s fixed fair and remunerative price (FRP). A decision to this effect was taken at the meeting of representative of Tamil Nadu Sugarcane Farmers Association (TNSFA) with Finance minister O. Panneerselvam and Industries Minister M.C. Sampath at the secretariat.
The talks were held after the sugarcane farmers staged a “waiting protest’ in the city as the 42 sugarmills including 24 private and 16 cooperative sector sugar mills has pending arrears to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore. “The government has assured to immediately disburse the dues of the cooperative and public sector sugar mills amounting to '300 crore. As far the as private sugar mills, the government has promised to make the mills to pay the dues as per the Centre’s FRP first.
After the deepavali festival, a tripartite meeting of the government, private mills and union will be held to decide on the arrears to be paid as per the state advisory price (SAP) for sugarcane. We have insisted that it was the state government’s responsibility to get the SAP arrears from the private mills,” said D. Ravindran, general secretary of TNSFA. He noted that the state government for the first time issued notice to the private sugar mills under the Revenue Recovery Act for not paying dues to the farmers as per the FRP to the tune of Rs 300 crore. Besides, the private mills have an accumulated arrears amounting to Rs 940 crore since 2013-14 as it refused to pay the SAP, he said, noting that the South Indian Sugar Mills Association has moved the court against the state government for fixing SAP for sugarcane over the FRP.
He noted that the private sugar mills have to pay Rs 350 crore to farmers for the profits it earned between 2004 and 2009. Mr Ravindran accused the Centre of betraying the sugarcane farmers by keeping FRP unchanged at Rs 2,300 per tonne as per the Indian Sugar Mills Association plea.
