HYDERABAD, Oct 19: President of the Sindh Agriculture Forum Noor Ahmed Nizamani has said that cotton farmers in the province have been hit hard by low prices of their produce and urged the government to ensure that they receive fixed price of raw cotton.

In a statement faxed to Dawn here on Monday, he said that while the ginners were selling cotton to the Trading Corporation of Pakistan at the rate of Rs2,160 per 40 kg, they were not paying the farmers Rs925 per 40kg for raw cotton, the minimum support price fixed by the government.

He demanded that the Sindh government should take action against the ginners who were forcing the farmers to sell cotton at the rate of Rs750 to Rs800 per 40kg.

He demanded that the TCP should buy cotton only from those ginners who paid minimum support price to the farmers.

He said that the TCP had received about Rs10 billion and was purchasing 50,000 bales of cotton per day from ginners and added that farmers in Punjab were getting higher price.

He complained that ginners were cheating farmers in weight and alleged that some factories in Tando Adam were deducting as much as 40kg on a pickup-load of cotton.