HYDERABAD: The Sindh Abadgar Ittehad, a farmers’ lobbying group, has alleged that Pakistan Peoples Party’s (PPP) Sindh Government has been creating harsh economic conditions for the agriculturists since it came to the power more than a decade ago.
Talking to the media here Sunday, the SAI’s President Nawaz Zubair Talpur said after forcing the farmers to suffer billions of rupees over the sale of sugarcane crop to the sugar mills, they had been made to suffer another loss of the same amount on wheat crop. “The farmers in Sindh have been facing great injustice when it comes to water, sugarcane and wheat,” he contended.
Talpur said wheat crop was already in the process of harvest, adding that in the lower Sindh region 90 per cent of the wheat crop had been harvested.
“But the officials of Sindh Food Department are still in slumber as no wheat procurement centre has been opened in the province so far,” he claimed.
According to him, the province would produce a bumper crop of around 50 million tons but the provincial government by delaying the opening of the centres had exposed the farmers to exploitation at the hands of the middlemen and flour mills.
“The traders are paying as low as Rs1,100 per 40 kilograms against the government fixed rate of Rs1,300 per 40 kg,” he claimed.
On behalf of the wheat growers in Sindh, Talpur demanded that the wheat procurement centres should be opened in Sindh without further delay.
He also called for the issuance of notification by the Sindh Government for fixing Rs182 per 40 kg rate of sugarcane crop.
Talpur bewailed that the water shortage in Sindh had reached 44 per cent and that many districts in lower Sindh even could not get drinking water.
Muhammad Javed, Muhammad Anwar, Mir Subedar, Saifullah Gul and other office bearers of SAI were also present on the occasion.
