Farmers bear the brunt of milk scare

Alhaz Hossain, a dairy farmer from Pabna’s Chatmohar, yesterday brought 30 litters of milk at the Pran Chilling Center (a unit of Pran Group for milk collection) at Sharatnagar Bazar in Bhangura, but to no avail.

Having been refused by the Pran center, the farmer was forced to sell 20 litters of his milk at only Tk 15 a litter to a local sweets shop. 

Similarly, another farmer Harunur Rashid from the same upazila could not sell 60 litters of milk that he brought to supply at Milk Vita’s milk collection center.

All the leading milk factories stopped collecting milk from the producers following a high court directive banning 14 leading companies from producing and selling milk for the next five weeks.

Like them several hundred dairy farmers, finding no other way, dumped their milk at the Bhangura Poura bus stand area yesterday noon and staged an hour-long demonstration protesting the sudden closing of milk collection from the farmers.

“Suddenly the companies have stopped collecting milk, but nobody thinks about the huge amount produced in this zone. Farmers have no use of the huge amount milk if they cannot sale it,” Harun said during the protest.

There are some 1,400 dairy farmers in Bhangura upazila who produce 65 thousand litters of milk every day, said Harunur Rashid, coordinator of Patharghata Milk cooperative society in the upazila.

The milk was used to be supplied at the collection centres of Milk Vita, Brac, Pran and Akiz in the upazila, he added.

All the companies have stopped collecting milk from the dairy farmers causing immense sufferings to the milk producers, he said.

He also demanded a restoration of milk collection for the sake of country’s biggest dairy hub.

Md Ashrafuzzaman, in charge of Milk Vita’s Bhangura collection center, told The Daily Star that they had received an order from the company’s headquarter asking them not to buy milk from the farmers following the court order on Sunday.