MULTAN, Oct 1: The Kisan Board Pakistan (KBP) has criticized the government for once again increasing the price of diesel, one of the main inputs of the agriculture sector.

In a statement on Monday, KBP central president Sadiq Khan Khakwani and secretary-general Mian Muhammad Ilyas said that despite reduction in POL prices in the international market the government had increased the diesel price.

They said that the one-rupee per litre raise in the diesel price would increase growers’ cost of production manifold. “The recent hike in the diesel price is aimed at stopping growers’ tractors and tube-wells,” they added.

The KBP leaders said that faulty marketing system of the farm outputs had been a source of trouble for the growers while the time and again increase in input prices compounded their woes.

Meanwhile, KBP’s Punjab chief Chaudhry Nigar Ahmad and secretary Malik Muhammad Ramazan alleged that the sugar millers were processing gur (raw sugar) in huge quantity at their factories.

In a press release, they alleged that the millers wanted to supply gur more than its demand in the market to depress its prices. “This will deprive the farmers of preparing ‘gur’ and sell it in the market instead of supplying sugarcane to the millers at throwaway prices.”