Meet wants CM to intervene in Ongole Dairy crisis

Ongole: The Prakasam District Development Forum, the Andhra Pradesh Raitu Sangham, other farmer associations and public organisations held a roundtable conference in Ongole on Wednesday and demanded that the government take responsibility of the Ongole Dairy and revive it to full functionality.

Chunduri Rangarao, president, Annam Kondalarayudu, treasurer, Ahmed, secretary and Kanakarao Madiga, secretary of the forum, Bhairapaneni Suryanarayana, president of Andhra Pradesh Junior Colleges Managements Association, Chunchu Seshaiah from Virginia Tobacco Farmers Association, Vaddi Hanuma Reddy from Andhra Pradesh Raitu Sangham, Chavali Sudhakara Rao from Organization for Protection of Democratic Rights and others participated in the roundtable.

The speakers worried about the pathetic condition of the Ongole dairy and wanted the government to immediately respond to bring it out from the crisis. They said that the dairy was unable to pay the dues to the farmers for the last 14 months and they questioned the management of dairy that why it didn’t initiated the damage control very earlier. 

They also mentioned that the employees in the dairy also didn’t receive their salaries for the last seven months due to the decisions of the management. They said that the government was using the Ongole dairy for its political mileage and demanded that the government recover the money looted from the dairy from the board members and initiate criminal action on them.

The participants in the roundtable said that once well functioning and profitable dairy with more than one lakh liters of milk production daily, was set to degrade from its standards and fall below production of just 3,000 liters per day with political interest.

 They found fault with the board decision of moving away from the cooperative organizations act to companies act and opined that it was intentionally made to evade government involvement in its operations. 

They said that the crisis was not happened instantly but gradually developed as a cancer and consumed the dairy now. They said that the management, employees and public representatives in the district didn’t care for the dairy and the government also wontedly neglecting it.

 The speakers demanded that Chief Minister  Chandrababu Naidu, who is touring the district on Thursday, address the crisis of the dairy and make a favourable announcement about the dues of farmers and salaries of employees pending for a long t