April 14, 2008	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 7, 1429

HYDERABAD, April 13: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture has called upon the Sindh chief minister to direct sugar mill owners to pay dues of sugarcane growers according to the rates fixed by the government.

A meeting of the chamber here on Sunday reminded the chief minister that initially the government had fixed cane price at Rs67 per 40kg and reduced it to Rs63 per 40kg after some months.

The meeting demanded that the price of the sugarcane supplied before the revision of the rates be paid at the rate of Rs67 per 40kg.

The growers had suffered a lot and had been exploited for too long, the chamber said and demanded that the exploitation should end now because a peoples’ government was in power.

It demanded reduction in the prices of fertilisers and solution of chronic problems of water and power supply. It urged the government to convene a Sindh agriculture conference to discuss problems of the farming community.

Expressing concern over lawlessness in rural area, it said that the agrarian economy had suffered irreparable losses and urged the government to immediately adopt corrective measures to improve law and order situation.

It called upon the government to direct commercial banks to advance small loans to livestock owners to rehabilitate them and to set up milk plants.

It expressed satisfaction that the Sindh agriculture department was supplying agricultural machinery to the growers at subsidised rates and said that the practice should continue on permanent basis.

It congratulated Syed Qaim Ali Shah on his election as Sindh chief minister and Syed Ali Nawaz Shah and Saifullah Dharejo on their appointment as ministers of agriculture and irrigation, respectively, and called upon them to convene a meeting of the agriculturists to resolve their problems.

Expressing concern over rampant joblessness in rural Sindh, it pointed that Sindh had considerable oil reservoirs and proposed an oil refinery in Tando Alam Khan Mari.

The meeting was presided over by the chamber’s senior vice-president Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur and attended by Anwar Bachani, Mohammad Khan Sarejo, Nawab Ghulam Qadir Laghari, Misri Khan Mallah and others.