As sugar industries go through a rough phase in the State, the Nayagarh Sugar Complex Ltd has been on the verge of closure.
Failure of the State Government to keep its words apart, disruptions by local politicians has stopped operation of the factory for the last 15 days, its management said on Sunday.
A group led by the local sarpanch allegedly prevented entry of the management members as well as workers into the sugar factory which has been ransacked, its chairman Trailokya Mishra told mediapersons here. Besides, power as well as water supply to the workers colony has been snapped.
The police are not receiving any complaint while intimation to Collector and SP has not yielded result, he added.
While the mischief mongers have taken over the complex, the forest officials found six teak logs from the premises and booked a case which, Mishra said, is a motivated move.
“We have no access to our factory complex and the vested interests are giving shape to their plans on the pretext of taking up the cause of the sugarcane farmers who have not been paid their dues,” he added.
“Our sale was stopped for 75 days when the district administration put an embargo over lifting of PDS quota for 2011-12 only to realise its mistake later. We were neither allowed to re-process the old stock nor was a single spoon of sugar permitted to go out for sale. Later, we had to push sale at lower prices for which the farmers could not be paid on time,” Deputy MD Sabyasachi Mishra said.
Nayagarh Sugar, which was a cooperative body before it was privatised in 2004, is among the first State-run enterprises to have been divested.
However, the Government has, so far, not handed over title of the land and property to the management which paid its total instalments in 2009, eight years ahead of schedule with approval from the Cabinet. Now, the management has not been able to get working capital from banks for modernisation and upgradation.
“This way, we will not be able to sustain our activity. But the biggest irony is, if we don’t operate, 10,000 sugarcane farmers will be left in the lurch,” Mishra added.