MADURAI: Pressing the state government to take action towards opening a cooperative sugar mill in Madurai, over 100 sugarcane farmers from the district staged a siege protest at the collectorate during the grievance meeting held on Friday.
Speaking about the protest, Tamil Nadu Sugarcane farmers association State Deputy Secretary N Palanichamy, said, "We have been urging the state government to take action towards opening the National Cooperative Sugar Mill in Madurai since we staged a protest for 46 days in 2021, following which the state government had announced to open a sugar mill.
A special committee was also formed to assess the expenses to open the sugar mill in the district. However, besides the committee submitting a report, no action followed. Maintenance work ahead of harvest season has to be started at least by December to save us time to prepare a mill to procure sugarcane in the harvest season in January. Since the work hasn't begun yet, the farmers will once again face hardships during the upcoming harvest season."
He also added that there are nearly 2000 acres of the registered area under the mill and about 1,500 acres of registered area cultivating sugarcane in the district, which will be affected if the sugar mill is not operational by January. "More than 3 lakh tons of sugarcane awaits the reopening of the sugar mill in the district, which is also the only cooperative sugar mill in the southern region. Once the mill is reopened, the farmers should be provided information on the standard procurement prices without backlogs," he added.
The farmers also raised issues regarding irrigation, crop procurement, and others at the meeting, following which Collector S Aneesh Sekhar promised to take measures.