Long delay in payment of sugarcane emerges as a major issue in Doaba region during APP Punjab Dialogue

NADALA (KAPURTHALA): Non-payment or delay in payment of sugarcane, agriculture department failing in rising to the agrarian crisis and lack of marketing infrastructure for alternate crops emerged as the key issues during the Punjab Dialogue session by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) here with farmers of Doaba region here. Different farmers underlined the issue relating to much delay in the release of payment of sugarcane they supplied to sugar mills in the last season.
As farmers shared their issues, Punjab Dialogue head Kanwar Sandhu said that the party had already already indulged into a brainstorming session with legal expert HS Phoolka to finalise a policy for recovery of agriculture loan on the pattern of policy made by Sir Chhotu Ram during pre-independence era when there was no forcible recovery of agriculture loan.
AAP spokesperson Sukhpal Singh Khaira said that once voted to power, AAP’s priority would be to strengthen the ‘defunct’ Agriculture Department of Punjab, where majority of the key posts were lying vacant due to Badals’ apathy towards peasantry.
AAP’s farmers’ wing head G S Kang said that once voted to power, AAP would set up soil testing labs in each district so that farmers could be guided for cultivating the particular crop for which their soil is most suitable.
“It is first time that Modi government has made direct subsidy to sugar mills, instead paying it farmers, resulting in flourishing of private sugar mills and poor plight of farmers”, Sandhu said adding that while government sugar mills were on the verge of closures, private mills were mushrooming like anything.