The Navhind Times – 5 March 2018, PONDA: The loss making 45-year-old Sanjivani sugar factory at Dayanandnagar-Dharbandora is mulling ‘legal’ option against an Aurangabad-based agency for the recovery of advance of Rs 5 crore paid to it for supply of cane cutting tolies (workers), sources informed.
The agency has neither responded to the factory’s calls for the last two months nor supplied any tolies, added the sources.
The sources informed that the sugar factory had paid Rs 5 crore to the agency for supply of 102 tolies with transport facility before the start of the sugarcane crushing season.
The factory had set a target of getting 1 lakh tonne of sugarcane from outside and tie-up with the agency was a part of it.
However, since the commencement of the crushing season, the agency has failed to provide required tolies to the factory and also have also not responded to the factory’s calls.
When contacted, sugar factory administrator Damodar Morajkar confirmed that Rs 5 crore was paid as advance to the agency, but the agency has failed to deliver the service.
“The Aurangabad-based agency was paid an amount of around Rs 5 crore for supplying the tolies. But it has failed to deliver the service. The factory is trying to contact the agency and has also sought a legal opinion on the issue,” he said.
“I wasn’t in charge of the factory at time of the deal. So, I will have to study that matter in detail,” he added.
As per information, the sugar factory has received only 27,000 tonne of sugarcane from outside state against the around 40,000 tonne of state cane so far this season. Out of which only 7,000 tonne is from the agency, which the factory had tied-up with, informed another official of the sugar factory.
According to the farmers, each toly consists of around 20 workers, who are given task of cutting sugarcane from the farm and loading it into the truck. Then the agency truck transports the cane to the factory.
For all this work, farmer used to pay around Rs 7 lakh a season for a toly. This year factory had tied up with the agency to supply the tolies and rate fixed was around Rs 5 lakh a toly. But agency ditched the factory by taking advance of Rs 5 crore.
At the beginning, agency had sent around 20 tolies (around 400 workers) and some tonne of cane with them. With work done by the 20 tolies, factory may recover around Rs 50 to 60 lakh. But rest of the money will have to come from agency which had struck the deal. If factory fails to recover the amount, factory’s loss will double, expressed a senior official from the factory.
