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May 26, 2008
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Monday
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Jamadi-ul-Awwal 20, 1429
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HYDERABAD: Govt doing nothing to stop water theft, deplore farmers
HYDERABAD, May 25: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture has observed that the government has taken no action on repeated complaints about the theft of Sindh’s share of water by a particular province.
It observed that the chamber was left with no option but to meet the prime minister and the Sindh chief minister and the irrigation minister to bring this ‘injustice’ to their notice.
A meeting of the chamber was held here on Sunday. Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah presided over the meeting which discussed problems faced by growers.
Mr Shah said that whatever water given to Sindh through Tarbela and Mangla dams was stolen on the way through pumping machines.
He demanded of the government that Sindh should be given its share of water at Guddu Barrage.
He said on the one hand the upper riparian province was stealing Sindh’s water and, on the other, big landlords of Sindh were also stealing water, depriving tail-end growers of their water share.
As a result, he said, the tail-end growers had not been able to cultivate even one acre of their land during the cotton season.He also called upon the chief minister, the agriculture minister and the cane commissioner of Sindh to direct sugar mills to pay the dues of sugarcane growers without any delay.
The meeting urged the Sindh chief minister to warn the sugar mills that enough was enough and that the dues of growers should be paid forthwith.
A landlord of Tando Jam Mohammad, Mir Zafarullah Talpur, complained that farmers at the upper stretch of Nara West Branch (canal) were stealing all the available water whereas the tail-end growers had not received even a drop of water for their onion crop. He demanded strict action against the water thieves.
The meeting regretted the apathy of the Sindh government with regards to the payment of dues of sugarcane growers by sugar mills.
It appreciated a decision of the agriculture department for issuing instructions for the purchase of milk and meat by private companies from the interior of Sindh and selling it in cities at sale points.—Bureau
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