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Hope floats for Chittur Cooperative Sugars

PALAKKAD: A proposal in the State budget for reopening the Chittur Co-operative Sugars and its distillery to make Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) has given new hopes to the factory.

The proposal to hand over the factory to the Excise Department to manufacture IMFL is likely to end the 1,459-day relay strike by workers demanding reopening of the factory.

The factory was closed in October 2002 and the distillery in July 2003.

The budget was a disappointment for sugarcane farmers as there was no proposal to start sugar manufacturing in the company.

Barring 107 permanent workers and 14 casual workers, more than 300 workers took the voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) after the closure of the company.

A team of experts appointed by the State government visited Chittur Co-operative Sugars Limited at Menonpara near here in December and held discussions with the management as part of a move to reopen the company.

The company began operations in 1965, as a cooperative of sugarcane farmers in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, was running at a loss except in 1974-75, 1982-83 and 1991-92. But it managed to survive with its distillery making profit by selling rectified spirit and making arrack.

The company fell into bad days with the ban on arrack. It was producing arrack from molasses, a by-product of sugarcane grinding.

When arrack was banned, the factory had to stop production.

Its attempt to get a licence to produce Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) also was rejected by the previous Left Democratic Front (LDF) government.

The Extra Neutral Alcohol (ENA) produced by the factory had no takers because of its low quality for producing IMFL and also due to the high price.

The government also did not insist the distilleries in Kerala to buy spirit from the factory. Now, the company has to pay arrears of Rs.3 crore to sugarcane farmers and the sugarcane cultivation shrunk from 7,000 acres in 2004 to just 200 acres now in Chittur taluk.

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