PONDA: Sanjivani Sugar Factory President Rajendra Dessai along with vice presidents Harshad Prabhudessai and Francis Mascarenhas and office bearers told media on Thursday that they had found a Karnataka-based contractor to run Sanjivani Sugar Factory at Dharbandora. They called on Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to immediately consider the farmers’ proposal to restart Sanjivani Sugar Factory by floating tender at the earliest to start either ethanol production, jaggery or sugar production.
“It’s time now government encourage farmers to run the factory at earliest,” farmers said.
Francis Mascarenhas said, luckily Social Welfare Minister Subhash Faldesai arranged the meeting of Chief Minister Pramod Sawant with the contractor chosen by farmers and he appears to be positive towards the farmers proposal to restart the factory with an ethanol plant at the earliest.
Rajendra Desai recalled that Government had floated tender for starting ethanol production at Sanjivani Factory on PPP model, but with no response coming forth, the effort to restart factory failed, following which the farmers had staged an agitation.
In response to agitation Chief Minister Pramod Sawant had told farmers that it’s not possible for government to operate the factory and farmers themselves should find some right person or contractor to run operations of Sanjivani Sugar Factory. Accordingly farmers finally found a contractor from Karnataka who has vast experience in ethanol production and has shown willingness to run the factory. From discussion held with him it appears he is the right person to run factory and also has agriculture related experience.
