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| October 2, 2005 | Sunday | Sha’aban 27, 1426 |
Farmers demand tax exemption: Water shortage in Sindh
HYDERABAD, Oct 1: The working committee of the Sindh Abadgar Board has called upon President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to exempt farmers of Sindh from all taxes.
Abdul Majeed Nizamani presided over the committee’s meeting here on Saturday.
The meeting said that the agrarian economy of Sindh was declining since the year 2000 due to shortage of water and increase in prices of agricultural inputs, so the government should help farmers by exempting them from paying taxes.
It said political and administrative interference, corruption and lawless had also given blows to the economy.
The committee advised that the production of wheat should be increased from 2.5 million to 3.2 million tons to recover the economy and to achieve this target, 4,800 tube-wells should be installed by January of the next year. The board demanded that 25 per cent of Punjab’s water should be given to Sindh till November as the province would not need it during this period.
The meeting proposed appointment of a monitoring committee to improve the irrigation system within the next two years so that the farmers at the lower end of Sindh would also get water.
The Sindh Abadgar Board expressed concern over increasing prices of oil and appealed to the president and the prime minister to fix oil prices.
The committee demanded that the government should not import commodities at the time of their harvest to maintain their price level.
REGISTRATION: Twenty-six companies of pesticides have been stopped to do business in Sindh, whose registration expired, till renewal of their registration.
The companies are Sunrise Agro Chemicals, Prizm Agro Marketing, Farm Care Services, Farm Equity Pakistan, Foliar Chemical, Agri Pest Management, Jaffer Brothers, Bayer Das, Archer Chemical, Corex Agro Chemicals, Global Enterprise, Cotton Growers Services, Zagro NPC, Sharp Agro Business, Kuwait Enterprises, Sada Bahar Agro Chemicals, King APR Link, Heera Pesticides Corporation, Wel Agro Wise, Al-Farid Corporation, Best Chemicals Corporation, Cosmos Agro Chemicals, Apex Agro Chemicals, Millat Agro Services, Al-Fateh Trading Corporation and Rainbow Agri Business.
A spokesman of the directorate of agriculture information, government of Sindh, advised the stakeholders, in a statement issued here on Saturday, not to make any deal with these companies.
He said the companies had already been directed to renew their registration, otherwise necessary action would be taken against them.
SAU: Former Vice-Chancellor of the Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam, Dr Abdul Qadir Ansari who is also the incumbent vice chancellor of the Al-Khair university has expressed fear that there will be shortage of research scholars and teachers in the country as the trained manpower is going abroad.
He was speaking at the inaugural function of the third course of the staff development at the Tandojam campus on Saturday.
He said the establishment of the staff development centres by the Higher Education Commission was a hope in the situation.
Speaking on the occasion the vice chancellor of the SAU, Dr Basheer Ahmed Sheikh, said the university was trying hard to train teachers.
He said it was necessary to adopt changes in the research methodology according to international standards. Those who also spoke on the occasion were Dr Ghulam Hussain Soomro, Professor Ameer Ali Qadri and Dr Ghulam Hussain Jamro.
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