GULBARGA: Even though Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy announced over a month ago a compensation package for sugar factories to continue crushing of sugarcane up to May 31, the Government is yet to issue an order to enable the sugar factories to claim compensation.

Meeting in April

Presiding over a meeting of representatives of sugar factories and leaders of different farmers' organisations last month, the Chief Minister said the factories should extend their crushing operations till May 31 in view of the glut of sugarcane. He also noted that factories in Maharashtra were not purchasing sugarcane from Karnataka farmers because of a similar glut there.

Compensation

When the sugar factory representatives said extending the crushing operations till the end of May would result in heavy losses because the sugar content in the sugarcane would have dropped by then, Mr. Kumaraswamy announced that the Government would compensate the factories by paying Rs. 100 for each tonne of sugarcane crushed.

Order not issued

However, according to Renuka Sugar Factory Chairperson Vidya Muchlambi, the Government has not issued any notification or order to enable the sugar factories claim the compensation.

The Renuka Sugar Factory has taken the Aland Cooperative Sugar Factory on lease for eight years from the present season and has established its own factory at Havalga in Afzalpur taluk.

Addressing a press conference here on Sunday, Ms. Muchlambi said that while the management had decided to continue crushing sugarcane at the Aland factory till the first week of June, crushing operations at the Havalga factory was suspended from Saturday in view of serious technical problems in the boiler unit.

All-time high

She said the Aland Sugar Factory, despite failing to touch the maximum crushing capacity of 1200 tones a day, had crushed 2.16 lakh tonnes of sugarcane this year, which was an all-time high. The Havalga factory had crushed of 2.01 lakh tonnes. Usually the first year crushing is considered as a trial run, and only about 70,000 tonnes of sugarcane is crushed.

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