Team Herald
PONDA: To provide a boost to the Goa Dairy farmers, Chairman Durgesh Shirodkar on Thursday announced that the Dairy will pay Rs 150 crore price difference to more than 4,000 farmers by March 31, from Rs 3 crore profit earned for the past 11 months to encourage milk farming.
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While addressing the media persons, Shirodkar said that for survival of Goa Dairy, survival of the farmers, who are their back bone, is very important. In the last few years, many farmers were in distress and frustrated due to continuous losses to Goa Dairy and had even expressed their feeling to drop the Dairy activity in the annual general meeting.
He said, “The farmers had even worked hard during COVID-19 pandemic and supplied milk to the Goans. So in order to encourage and boost them to survive, the farmers and also the Goa Dairy, we had taken decision to pay them their share of profit after a long gap.”
“Around more than 4,000 farmers supply milk to Goa Dairy through 176 milk supplying societies of Goa Dairy and will get the price difference from the time period of 11 months for financial year 2020-21 that is April 2020 to February 2021,” he said.
Shirodkar said that the Goa Dairy earned Rs 3 crore profit for the 11 months period from April 2020 to February 2021 and declared to pay 50 per cent (Rs 1.5 crore) as profit. Thus farmers of Goa Dairy would get 82 paise after every litre of milk they supplied to Goa Dairy.”
He informed that the current sale of Goa Dairy milk in the Goan market is around 53,000 litres.
It may be recalled that Shirodkar, who is a farmer from Salcete, was appointed chairman of three-member Administrative Committee by Registrar of Cooperative Societies last year following Goa Dairy Board dissolved after some directors were found in mismanagement along with former managing director.
He had claimed that during his tenure, the Goa Dairy has been in profit of Rs 3 crore in past 11 months and announced to distribute profit earned to the farmers as price difference.
He said many had opposed to distribute profit to the farmers. However, being himself a farmer, he knows the hardship they faced in milk business.
He said that the Goa Dairy also recovered the loss of Rs 9 lakh which was caused by milk supplying transporters, who protested few months ago, by not supplying the milk in the Goa market.
When asked about Dairy suffering a loss of Rs 8 crore, Shirodkar said it suffered during previous financial years. We will try to recover it but that does not mean the farmers should not get their share of profit.
He also informed that the cattle feed plant is now in profit. He said in order to bring Goa Dairy on the path of profit, the two appointed officials Yashwant Kamat, Avit Naik, beside Goa Dairy Managing Director Anil Fadte supported him a lot.
He said the filing system brought by former administrator Arvind Khutkar also helped the Diary.
