KARNAL: Thousands of labourers and contractual workers employed for harvesting and crushing of sugarcane and their transportation to mills in Haryana, are staring at uncertainty as the indefinite strike called by farmers demanding a hike in the State Advised Price (SAP) entered the fifth day on Tuesday.
The farmers’ bodies have said they will not allow the crushing operations at sugar mills until the Haryana government increases the SAP to ₹450 per quintal from the existing ₹362.
However, farm labourers — both local and migrant — want the impasse to end and crushing operations resume soon.
Kanahiya Kumar, a labourer from Bihar’s Betiah district, who along with 12 others from his native village had come to Karnal for harvesting sugarcane, said the strike has left them jobless. “We have been sitting idle since January 20,” Kumar said. “We don’t even have the money to buy ration for the group.”
Biswas Kumar, who along with seven other labourers from West Bengal had come to work in sugarcane fields and mills in Bhadson in Karnal district, said: “The strike is costing me close to ₹700 daily. We harvest an average of 100 quintals of sugarcane every day at a rate of ₹51 per quintal.”
Though the exact number of labourers deputed in the harvesting of sugarcane in the state is not known, farmer leader Satpal Kaushik estimated it to be around 30,000.
“According to the Haryana Sugarfed, the per day crushing capacity of cooperative sugar mills is 2.54 lakh (254,000) quintals besides the crushing capacity of private mills is around 1.70 lakh quintals. Since the harvesting is done manually, one can estimate that around 30,000 labourers should be required to send a total of 4.24 lakh quintals sugarcane to mills every day,” Kaushik said. “Additionally, over 10,000 labourers are engaged in unloading and loading of sugarcane at the purchase centres.”
Most of the labourers from Bihar are returning home, he added.
Sugarcane farmers also fear that migrant labourers will return to their home states of the crushing did not resume in the mills within the next few days.
“Some farmers have withheld the payments of the labourers, who, they might will flee if their dues are cleared,” said Ishwar Singh, a farmer from Indri in Karnal. “There are also some farmers who are providing free ration to the labourers.”
Hundreds of drivers of the tractor-trailers, engaged in the transportation of sugarcane from the purchase centres to the mills, are also facing the brunt. “The strike is costing me ₹2,000 per day. There are hundreds of tractor-trailer drivers like me who are waiting for this strike to end,” said Ishwar Singh, a tractor driver from Yamunanagar’s Radaur.
Meanwhile, the decision to intensify the stir was taken in a state-level meeting of the representatives of farmers of all 14 sugar mills of Haryana. It was unanimously decided to continue with the agitation. Farmers have announced a series of protests till January 29, and the next meeting has been called on January 30.
The government has also made it clear that the decision to increase the SAP will only be taken as per the recommendations of a committee constituted to consider the demand.
According to the figures of the state agriculture department, around 90,000 hectares are under sugarcane crop in the state and Haryana Sugarfed claims that the government-operated 11 mills render service to about 40,000 sugarcane growers’ families out of a total of 600,000 families associated with agriculture in the state.
