Labour Exploitation
Sugar federation rejects allegations of labour exploitation during harvest
This story was originally published at 20:23 IST on 28 November 2024
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NEW DELHI – The National Federation of Cooperative Sugar Factories has rejected allegations of exploitation of labourers during cane harvesting in Maharashtra, as reported by The New York Times. The federation said because of the adverse publicity, US-based bulk buyers like Pepsi and Coca-Cola may be pressured not to source sugar from the state.
In a series of reports, The New York Times has written about the plight of cane labourers, including debt trap, child marriage, and hysterectomies on women labourers. Federation President Harshvardhan Patil said there might have been a few extreme cases, but largely, the US-based media reports are far from the ground realities.
Patil said states like Maharashtra and Gujarat continue an age-old practice of manual harvesting and transporting sugarcane from farm to factory, unlike northern states where farmers cut their own cane and deliver it at the mill gate.
In the system followed in Maharashtra and Gujarat, skilled labourers are supplied by middle men, who are responsible for picking up the labourers from their villages and reaching them back after harvest.
Patil said though the cane-cutting labourers are not on the payroll of sugar mills, they are offered food, shelter, timely payments, medical facilities, and education on humanitarian grounds. Patil said he feared that US-based companies may shift away from key sugarcane growers in south India--Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Gujarat—and purchase sugar from Uttar Pradesh.
Following the reports, Bonsucro, a sugar industry body that sets standards, said it would create a human rights task force to look into the Indian sugar industry. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola met with Indian government leaders and sugar suppliers last month to discuss responsible harvesting, reported the New York Times.
"Cane labourers 10 years before were around 10 lakhs (1 million), now it is only 500,000," Patil told reporters. To address labour issues, the National Cooperative Development Corporation will fund the purchase of 10,000 cane-cutting machines, Patil added. Thus, sooner or later, the cane-cutting operations will be taken over by harvesting machines, replacing the age-old manual cane-cutting activities, the federation said in a release. End
Reported by Afra Abubacker
Edited by Saji George Titus
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