Protesters pour milk on collection facility staff

Pune: Following the abrupt closure of the government-run milk collection centre in Chikhli town of Buldhana district recently, angry farmers and activists surrounded office-bearers of the milk collection co-operative and poured milk on them. 

Activists of the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) stormed the facility and gave vent to the farmers’ anger. The centre with the cold storage facility was an important centre for milk collection in Vidarbha. 

Milk collected from farmers of Bhandara area was stored in the refrigeration facility and then sent to the government collection facility in Bhandara. The Bhandara collection facility became non-functional for some reason. The collected milk had to be sent to a milk processing facility in Kolhapur. The time required for the milk to reach Kolhapur meant that the quality of the milk degraded. Hence, the Chikhli collection closed its operations.

Activists Vinayak Sarnaik of Rayat, Shantanu Patil of the NCP and former chairman of the APMC Satyendra Bhusari, spoke to senior officers of the dairy business department and tried to reason with them. 

A solution was reached when it was agreed that milk would be immediately brought to the collection facility to be refrigerated so that it retains quality. Milk was accepted in presence of office-bearers. However, the angry farmers poured milk on the office-bearers and workers of the collection centre and left.