January 27, 2008	Sunday	Muharram 17, 1429

TOBA TEK SINGH, Jan 26: The Kissan Board Pakistan (KBP) has announced staging demonstrations at all tehsil headquarters on Feb 10 if their grievances regarding fixing sugar cane and wheat purchase prices, uninterrupted and cheap provision of fertilizers and waiver of agriculture loans are not removed.

KBP central president Sardar Zafar Husain announced this during a press conference at the District Press Club on Saturday.

He said the government had fixed Rs60 per maund (40kg) purchase price of sugar cane, but the millers were purchasing the crop at around Rs45 per maund from growers with ‘so-called’ excuse of banned crop quality.

Similarly, the Food Department purchased the wheat crop from farmers at Rs400 per maund during the last season, but now it was available in the market at Rs800 per maund. He demanded fixing Rs700 per maund purchase price for the next crop.

Husain expressed concern over the government’s alleged indifference over extraordinary raises in DAP and other fertiliser prices.

He said the DAP, which was available at Rs800 per bag during the last year, was now being sold by shopkeepers for Rs1,800. He urged the government to take notice of this black-marketing and fix its control price.

He claimed there was no bumper wheat crop during the last season, but the government issued wrong figures and the yield was shown as surplus.

He said this year farmers could sow at least 14 per cent lesser wheat than the previous one because of the government and the millers’ fault as the sugar cane crushing started at least two months late than the schedule, and the growers failed to sow wheat on the same farmland owing to its occupation by the sugar cane crop.

The KBP president said loans worth Rs151 billion of big capitalists and industrialists had been written off by the government, but the small growers were being sent behind bars for defaulting on loans worth few thousand rupees.

He demanded waiving all loans against farmers having less than 10 acres of land and writing off all mark-up against farmers having more than 10 acres and recovering the actual loan amounts in installments from them.

KBP district president Mian Muhammd Saeed and tehsil president Abdul Haq Bhatti were also present.