Balaalo cattle destroy 400 acres of sugarcane
ATIAK – Security personnel have intensified operations to impound cattle being illegally grazed on parts of the Atiak Sugar plantation in Pacilo Parish, Atiak Sub-county, in Amuru district.
The operations follow the continued destruction of sugarcane at the plantation by stray cattle mostly belonging to migrant cattle keepers commonly known as Balaalo.
Up to 400 acres of three-month-old sugarcane have reportedly been destroyed in the last month by stray cattle in the latest blow to the factory’s investments since resuming sugarcane growing mid-last year.
Leonard Komakech, the Public Relations Officer at Atiak Sugar said on Monday that so far 315 stray cattle have been impounded in response to the destruction of sugarcane as multiple measures to avert their incursions are being drawn.
Komakech says 300 cattle were impounded last week and have since been handed to their owners with caution while 15 were impounded on Monday and handed to the army pending verification from their owners.
He notes that the factory management in collaboration with security plans to evict several migrant cattle keepers who have fenced off parts of the plantation land after purportedly purchasing them from locals’ fraudsters.
According to him, they have equally issued a six-month ultimatum to two groups of South Sudanese cattle keepers owning more than 4,000 herds of cattle to vacate from the factory land which they have been occupying for months.
Amuru Resident District Commissioner Geoffrey Osborn Oceng warned that security won’t hesitate to impound cattle belonging to anyone illegally grazing on the factory plantation which sabotages investments. Oceng noted that some of the impounded cattle currently being held by the army will be transported to the government holding ground for animals in the Nwoya district once their owners fail to turn up to claim them.
Atiak Sugar project in which the government owns a 41 percent share and injected over 500 billion shillings has suffered spates of setbacks culminating in losses on investments worth billions of shillings over the years. Consecutive fire incidences for instance on the sugarcane plantation was valued to have left losses amounting to 3 billion shillings according to the police annual crimes report of 2020.
The factory management however plans to resume full operations once it has a sustainable irrigation system in place to avert drought and fire outbreaks despite a 108 billion shillings’ investment that has seen its transition from manual labour to mechanization.
