Hundreds of farmers and employees of the Ongole Dairy staged a demonstration in front of the Prakasam Bhavan here on Monday demanding takeover of the dairy, which is now in the red, by the National Dairy Development Board(NDDB).
The crisis has deepened with milk collection dipping to about 5,000 litres as against 80,000 litres during the same period last year. Alleging swindling of funds to the tune of ₹166.85 crore by the members of the board running the dairy, employees union leader K.Sriramamurthy demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation and scrapping of the present board.
The State government should arrange for a loan of about ₹30 crore towards working capital from a commercial bank.
As many as 136 of the 167 farmers’ cooperative societies were still under the Mutually-Aided Cooperative Societies Act and there would be no hitches for its takeover by the NDDB, he explained.
Earlier intervention
It was the NDDB which had bailed out the dairy earlier when the milk powder unit, one of the largest units in Asia, idled. It put the dairy business on even keel before handing it over to the present board, they said.
NDDB alone could revive the fortunes of the dairy by ensuring orders for the unit which could process 3 lakh litres of milk per day. The dairy owed about ₹11 crore for the milk supplied by farmers to it and another ₹7.5 crore to employees by way of salaries, they explained. Protesting farmers said though they had repaid the loans, taken from banks through the dairy, to the dairy management, they were shocked to get notices from banks for payment of dues. The dairy board had diverted the payments made by them, they alleged.
