Pune may suffer milk shortage tomorrow

Milk supply to Pune city is likely to be affected tomorrow due to ongoing stir by dairy farmers, according to a supplier.

"The total need of the Pune city is around 25 lakh litres per day and with no collection at our centres today, we would not be able to supply milk to the city tomorrow," said Indranil Chitale, one of the partners at Chitale Bandhu Mithaiwale.

Chitale Bandhu is a major supplier of milk packets to Pune.

Indranil said the Chitales alone supply approximately 4 lakh litres of milk to the city.

"Due to the dip in the milk collection yesterday, the supply of the packet milk in the city has come down to 60 per cent. We could supply 60 per cent milk today just because yesterday we accepted milk from the farmers directly, but today no milk was collected," he added.

Contrary to Chitales, Pune District Cooperative Milk Producers' Society Ltd (Katraj dairy) is confident of catering to the need of milk in the city despite the agitation.

Vishnu Hinge, chairman of Katraj Dairy which is another major supplier of milk packets to the city, said there will not be an issue of milk supply.

"Today, we did not see any problem in the supply of the milk in the city and the supply was good. Keeping the consumers in mind, we tried to collect as much as milk from the farmers," he said, adding that the dairy today collected 70 per cent of milk from the farmers.

Katraj Dairy collects majority of milk from Pune district.

Dairy farmers are staging protests in several parts of the state since yesterday, demanding a higher purchase price and a subsidy of Rs 5 per litre for milk.

As part of the stir, protesters have been stopping tankers filled with milk and emptying them on roads.