Goemkarponn desk
PANAJI:
Due to the State Government’s indecision in starting the factory as promised before, the Sugarcane Farmers Association protested at Azad Maidan, Panaji.
They had already given time for the government till January 2, to step up their agitation.
Farmers claimed to have already put the government in touch with a contractor who was prepared to take over plant operations.
They declared that they would not stop their sit-in protest until the government decided to reopen the factory.
The farmers are now demanding that the government fulfills that promise within a months time.
Farmers feel forced to demonstrate in order to express their needs. They claimed that the cultivation of sugarcane is essential to the lives of many farmers and their families.
They said that they are hurt result of the factory’s delayed opening, particularly in light of the ethanol project that was promised four years ago.
Farmers’ complaints were exacerbated when they said that the factory had closed four years prior without their consent or confidence.
The government had previously stated that it was unable to locate a contractor to operate the facility in a public-private partnership.
Since the factory’s founding, a number of local farmers have relied on sugar cane farming as their primary source of income.
The factory was closed down by the govt in 2019-20 on grounds of recurring mechanical problems, non-availability of spare parts and shortage of local sugarcane and mooted switching over to an ethanol-producing unit after revamping it.
