Sarlahi, Dec 23: Two of the three sugar mills in Sarlahi have come into operation. Indushankar Sugar mills, the country’s largest sugar mill, in Harion and Mahalakshmi Sugar Mills in Bagdah have started crushing sugarcane for current season.
The third sugar mills, Annapurna Sugar Mills in Dhankaul still remains closed.
Manager of Indushanker Mills, Yognarayan Rajak, said the Mills has started crushing sugarcane after the sugarcane farmers withheld their protest programme. The sugarcane farmers of the district held a protest from last Saturday to Wednesday, calling upon the government to fix the minimum support price of sugarcane and pay the Rs 520 million as subsidy entitlement of the sugarcane farmers, who sold the sugarcane last year.
The farmers have decided to continue with the protest at the federal level and hence agreed to allow the sugar industry to resume operation, said Rajak.
According to him, the industry has set a target of crushing about 3.5 million quintals of sugarcane in the current season. Last year, the industry crushed 2.8 lakh million quintals of sugarcane. The production of sugarcane has increased this year.
Meanwhile, though the government fixed the price of sugarcane for this year at Rs 635 per quintal the sugarcane farmers do not agree with it, said Kapil Muni Mainali, President of the Nepal Sugarcane Farmers Federation.
