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HYDERABAD, Oct 29: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) has demanded that the Sindh government should immediately put an end to water rotation programme and ensure judicious distribution of water throughout the province.
The chamber’s executive committee at its weekly meeting on Sunday said that the rotation programme was not the correct answer to water shortages. SCA Senior Vice-President Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur chaired the meeting.
The answer to water shortages lied in the excavation and desilting of all the canals and water channels including Rohri canal. If the department did as suggested it would no more need resort to rotation programme every now and then, the meeting advised.
The meeting demanded that water should be released into canals and channels according to their original capacity and trees should be planted along the embankments of all the waterways.
The meeting appealed to all the sugarcane growers to start supplying cane to the mills which had resumed crushing and pointed out that if the growers harvested the sugarcane earlier, it would leave them with enough time to cultivate wheat.
To eliminate poverty from the rural areas the meeting appealed to the federal government to direct the State Bank of Pakistan to advance loans to people in rural areas for purchasing cattle, cattle breeding and installation of milk plants.
If the rural population was not provided alternate sources of livelihood then the slogan of poverty alleviation would remain a mere slogan, the meeting said.
Mohammad Khan Sarejo, Anwar Bachani, Misri Khan Mallah and Shafi Mohammad Baloch attended the meeting.
PRESS CONFERENCE: Arshad Hussain Pathan of Tando Wali Mohammad has accused an engineer of a law enforcement agency of harassing him and appealed to the authorities concerned to take action against him.
Mr Pathan also demanded that the Sindh health department take action against the RMO of civil hospital Hyderabad for denying medical treatment to his injured son and misbehaving with his female family members.
Speaking at a news conference at the local press club on Sunday, Mr Pathan who is a clerk at a government college in Qasimabad said that people rushed to hospital his 10-year-old son, Sarfaraz alias Sono who had suffered injuries after the engineer’s two sons dragged his son out of a general store and attacked him with knives on October 26.
People had first taken his injured son to the market police station to obtain a letter. As soon as his son was admitted to the casualty ward the engineer who was posted at Pano Aakil came to threaten his family with dire consequences if they did not keep quiet, he said.
The engineer was followed by the RMO of civil hospital, Dr Khan Mohammad Leghari, who directed his staff and the guards to throw out the injured boy and the family members, he said.
Mr Pathan alleged that the RMO misbehaved with his female family members and warned that if any harm came to any member of his family, police should hold the engineer responsible.
He demanded that the Sindh health department take action against the RMO and appealed to the higher authorities to take the engineer to task.
SNP: The chairman of Sindh National Party (SNP), Ameer Bhambhro, has said that his party will launch a protest movement after November 5 against the transfer of powers to allot Karachi lands to the governor and Karachi city government, sale of islands to a foreign company and alleged settlement of outsiders in the province.
In a statement faxed to Dawn on Saturday, he said that it had now become clear that the province had two administrative heads and the authority of chief minister was restricted to the matters concerning only interior Sindh.
Mr Bhambhro alleged that attempts were being made to reduce Sindhis to a minority and blot out their separate identity.
He stressed the need for launching a consistent movement for the protection of Sindhis’ rights. Merely issuing statements to the press would not serve any purpose, he said.
He said that his party would chalk out a strategy at its meeting scheduled for November 5 for besieging the governor’s house and staging sit-ins on the roads throughout the province.
