QUETTA, Oct 30: The Deputy Chairman of the Senate Mir Jan Mohammad Khan Jamali has urged the government to check the crisis created by a sudden drop in prices of various cash crops in domestic market and said if the trend was not checked, it would nullify the progress in the agricultural sector.

He was speaking to a delegation of the Zamindar Association in Usta Mohammad on Monday.

He said that thousands of growers and land owners had been affected by the decrease in paddy prices, adding that it was also depriving 65 per cent of the country’s population of the benefits of the progress achieved in the agriculture sector. Highlighting the importance of agriculture in national economy and present government was taking all possible steps for its development. However, he said that growers and landowners were not getting good price for their product because of the monopoly of agriculture product traders and exporters.

The deputy chairman Senate said that growers in Sindh and Balochistan were cultivating Irri-6 rice on a huge area but were not getting a fair price because of the nexus of exporters and mill owners. "This issue will be taken up in the upper house," Mir Jan Mohammad Khan Jamali assured the delegation.

Expressed his dismay about the rice traders and exporters’ tendency to fix rice prices in accordance with their own interests, Mr Jamali said that the export of agriculture products would be made transparent so that the growers could get a good price for their crops.

"The rice traders and exporters would not be allowed monopolise the price of agriculture crops," the deputy chairman of Senate assured the delegation. He said that steps would also be taken to remove mistrust between growers and exporters. He said that a delegation of the Zamindar Association would soon meet the president and the prime Minister in Islamabad to brief them about the problems faced by rice growers in Sindh and Balochistan.

Mr Jamali said that the growers would be informed about the prices of rice in the international market through print and electronic media to avoid destabilisation in domestic market because of the exporters’ propaganda. He said that the government would take all possible steps to protect the interests of the paddy cultivators.