MULTAN, June 25: Tenants of the Punjab Seed Corporation’s Peerowal farms have announced they will open the water channels to irrigate their lands, if the authorities do not give them the water supply in next 24 hours.

Khanewal Anjuman-i-Mazareen President Dr Christopher John told Dawn on Tuesday the tenants had sent letters to the local irrigation department authorities against the unjust treatment since they had launched the struggle to get ownership rights over the small pieces of lands they had been cultivating for the last century.

He said the closure of water channels would destroy the cotton crop sown by the tenants this year over an area of more than 7,000 acres. He said the crop was in urgent need of first irrigation water in the scorching heat of June. “Raising the ongoing cotton crop is a matter of life and death for the tenants,” he said.

The tenants of Peerowal had launched a struggle this year along with thousands of tenants of other state lands of the province for the ownership rights. The Peerowal tenants did not even share the wheat crop of Rabi season 2001-2002 with the PSO and the British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) which is a remnant of colonial era.

As a punitive action, the Punjab government deployed a heavy police contingent at Peerowal farms for the last one week to besiege all the link roads and intersections that led to the chaks of tenants.

Policemen are also guarding the water channels at source to ‘crush’ any attempt by the tenants to open out the water for their fields.

ROAD ACCIDENT: Two women were killed while a man was injured in a road accident on Multan-Bahawalpur Road on Tuesday.