HYDERABAD:The Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) has expressed dismay over the delay on part of the federal and Sindh governments in planning and executing measures for the rehabilitation of the rain and flood-affected people of the province.
A meeting of the SAB, a farmers’ lobbying group, held here at its office on Monday expressed concern that over 3 months had passed since it last rained yet the government had not come up with its rehabilitation plan.
The farmers said the catastrophe destroyed their crops, livestock, houses and other assets but they had not even received the financial support for sowing the winter crops.
The board demanded that the agricultural loans for the small and medium-sized farmers in the flood-affected areas should be written off completely.
The SAB further called for providing new interest-free loans to the affected farmers, who had suffered colossal financial losses due to the calamity, so that agricultural activity could be restarted.
The farmers said the livestock was the mainstay of small farmers, asking the Ministry of Livestock to ensure the availability of vaccines and medicines in the affected areas.
The board pointed out that large swathes of Sindh’s rural areas were still inundated, hampering the growers from sowing the winter crops.
“There is a need to dewater these areas on an urgent basis,” the board underlined.
The farmers outlined the ever-rising cost of production which they claimed had doubled in no time.
“The growers aren’t in a position to keep pace with that inflation. The government should reduce the price of fertilizer by 25 percent,” the board demanded.
The agriculturists at the meeting alleged that the black marketeers were charging Rs 500 to Rs 700 over and above the fixed price of the urea bags.
They urged the Sindh government to ensure that urea was made available to the farmers at the company notified rates and the hoarding caused overpricing should be stopped.
They lamented that while the government had so far not provided proper relief to the affected farmers, the dealers were plundering their scarce financial resources by inflating the rates.
The board also raised the issue of some sugar mills which had not started the cane crushing operation.
The growers said the early crushing season had already passed and any further delay in the cane procurement would affect the farmers of the areas of the sugar mills in question.
They asked the government to ensure the early start of the operations of those mills.
They pointed out that the delay in the cane cutting was delaying the sowing of wheat crop.
The meeting was presided by SAB’s Vice President Mahmood Nawaz Shah while its office bearers and members including Dr Zulfiqar Yousfani, Syed Zain Shah, Malook Nizamani, Imran Bozdar, Taha Memon, Azam Rind, Yar Mohammed Leghari and Zahid Durrani, among others, attended.