Tamil Nadu refuses cross-bordering of unsold milk from Kerala due to corona
Chennai: Tamil Nadu government has rejected Kerala government’s plea for transporting 3lakh liter of daily milk from Malabar region to the state inorder to convert it into milk products, citing COVID-19 concerns.
Sources said that the Kerala government took up the matter with chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami on Monday followed the health department’s advisory on Sunday refusing to accept milk from Kerala.
However, no relaxation has been given to the highly perishable essential commodity, leaving thousands of dairy farmers in Kerala in dire straits.
To cope up with the situation, the Malabar Regional Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union (MRCMPU) of Kerala Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation (Milma) suspended daily procurement of milk from cooperatives in the six northern districts on Wednesday.
K Vijayakumaran, Managing Director, MRCMPU, said that the difficult decision was taken after Tamil Nadu Milk Marketing Federation (Avin) intimated them that it would not be able to accept milk from Kerala citing the large number of coronavirus positives in the state.
In the pre-corona era, the procurement of MRCMPU from the farmers was six lakh litre per day. The demand has now tumbled to just three lakh litre due to the corona outbreak.
“If we have to save the excess amount of milk, it has to be converted into value added products like milk powder. Since Kerala has no infrastructure to convert such large quantity of milk into milk powder, we had to get support from the private plants in Tamil Nadu. But the Tamil Nadu government is unwilling to approve transporting milk through the border. So we are forced to cut short the procurement from farmers since April 2 till the situation back on track,” he said.
Tamil Nadu clamped down restriction on the transport of milk from Kerala at a time Avian in February signed MoU with Milma to supply at least 1.5lakh litre milk per day at the rate of Rs40 per litre following the milk shortage in Kerala.
The scenario in the Milk market now turned upside down with the Covid19 outbreak hit Kerala.
