HYDERABAD, Sept 20: Union council-level committees will be constituted for agriculture development in Sindh. NGOs and the agriculture extension staff will lend all possible support to the committees.

Prominent farmers will lead the committees while the extension staff will provide support.

This was stated by the Sindh secretary agriculture, Mr Nazar Hussain Mahar, while addressing a seminar on profitable sugarcane cultivation held under auspices of the Fauji Fertilizer Company on Tuesday.

He said field assistants and agriculture officers of the extension department would be imparted training on farms of progressive growers with master trainers from the private sector companies and other reputed institutes.

He said training would be given to poor and drop-out students for three month who would be given Rs200 allowance daily.

Mr Mahar said this would help them to get jobs with orchard growers and generate employment opportunities for jobless youths in the province.

Replying to a question raised by a grower about the cane crushing date, the secretary said date for sugarcane crushing would be fixed in consultation with all stakeholders and keeping in view the fact that less sugarcane was available.

He said sugar mills, sugarcane growers and the government would jointly work in a team spirit to smoothly tackle the issue.

He said that a meeting in this regard would be held in Karachi on Wednesday.

He said the president had launched a historic programme of watercourse improvement under which 33,000 watercourses would be improved.

The improvement of one watercourse will save one cusec of water, thus 33,000 cusecs of water will be saved which is equivalent to two Rohri canals capacity, he said.

He said an advisory cell and free helpline was being set up in office of the director-general agriculture extension for assistance of farmers and solving their problems. Mr Mahar said a website in Sindhi language exclusively on agriculture products would go online within a month.

The secretary said the TCP was establishing seven procurement centres in Sindh to procure clean cotton which would further stabilize seed cotton prices in the market.

He said the TCP had also been informed about delay in this respect.