HYDERABAD, April 11: The Pakistan Kisan Rabita Committee, a coalition of over 20 peasant organizations, has urged farmers to launch a struggle against government move to allot farmland to multinational companies.

Speaking at a news conference in the press club here on Sunday, a five-member delegation of the committee said that the government agreements with the multinational companies would seriously affect the local peasantry. They said that Pakistan would become slave of the imperialist forces due to the government policy.

The leaders said that small farmers would be left with no option but to sell their lands to the multinational companies and live like slaves. They said that under the agreements, banks in the country had been made bound to advance loans to the companies.

The leaders said that the companies could purchase unlimited lands which would be given the status of an industry but no labour laws would be applicable to them to protect the interests of farmers. They claimed that the companies would be exempted from payment of taxes on rain-fed land for seven years, irrigated lands for five years and barren lands for 20 years.

They said that it would be responsibility of the government to ensure water supply to the lands of these companies. Under the circumstances, they feared, a poor farmer would not be in a position to compete with the companies and would be forced to sell his land.

They said a conference of peasants of Sindh would be convened in Mirpurkhas on August 29 to evolve a joint strategy on the issue and it would be attended by peasant leaders of four provinces.

They assured peasant organizations of Sindh that all their counterparts in Punjab were of the opinion that the construction of Kalabagh dam and Greater Thal canal was a conspiracy against the country.

They demanded that instead of allotting lands to the foreign companies, the same should be distributed among peasants. They demanded that practice of allotting lands to military and civil bureaucracy should be stopped forthwith, 1.8 million bonded labour in Sindh should be rescued and on the pattern of European countries, subsidy should be given to farmers to enable them to meet challenges of the WTO regime.

They demanded that GST should be abolished on fertilizers, seeds and pesticides, electricity should provided to the farmers for tube-wells without any charge. They demanded that peasant courts should be established to redress grievances of growers. Earlier, the delegation comprising Mushtaq Goraya, Shamoon Pitrus and others visited Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Sanghar and Moro from April 5 to 11.

MUET: The Mehran University of Engineering and Technology has announced the results of postgraduate diploma in telecommunication and control engineering and hydraulics and irrigation engineering, second term 15th batch (full time evening) regular examination held in the month of Dec 2003.