The Punjab Government on Friday made it clear that it would not close any cooperative sugar mill, instead all out efforts would be made to run all of these.
“The cooperative sugar mills running in losses would be renovated and transformed and better performance would be derived from them,” said the State Cooperation Minister Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa during the meeting of departmental officers and MLAs regarding the present condition of cooperative sugar mills of the State and taking futuristic measures in this regard.
Randhawa said that either the present machinery of the cooperative sugar mills would be modified or the new one would be purchased.
He also called for the creation of such quality seeds of sugarcane which would yield sugar in a very large number. “Tissue culture would be boosted for this purpose and a sustained campaign would be waged to make the people aware about the fine quality seeds of sugarcane yielding sugar in vast measures,” he said.
Cautioning the general managers of all the sugar mills as well as the officers, Randhawa said that the trend of making profits accrue to private sugar mills be stopped.
He called for fixing the accountability of such officers who desist from and shirk their responsibility of deriving results from the cooperative sugar mills on par with the private sugar mills.
In another important announcement, Randhawa said that he would personally visit all the cooperative sugar mills and would hold brainstorming sessions there with the stakeholders and farmers with regard to the reasons of the cooperative sugar mills showing losses and future remedial steps.
He also elaborated that during these sessions, the general managers as well as the other officers would have to answer the queries of public.
On the occasion, the Minister also ordered that the record of previous three years, pertaining to the cooperative sugar mills running into losses, be probed and strict action would be taken against those officers found guilty.
