August 22, 2008	Friday	Sha'aban 19, 1429

HYDERABAD, Aug 21: Organisations of peasants and workers on Thursday hailed the Sindh government decision to distribute 212,800 acres of state land among peasants and workers under agricultural reforms but demanded at the same time that the government should completely abolish the feudal system.

Speaking at a news conference at the press club, leaders of the Sindh Hari Porhiyat Council, Inqalabi Jamhoori Workers Committee and Bhandar Hari Sangat said that for the first time the government had admitted the fact that a poor hari family could not cultivate land without judicious distribution of water, preparation of land and availability of financial and technical resources.

Comrade Ahmed Khan Laghari, Punhal Sario, Shaheena Ramzan, Taj Marri and Dost Mohammad Channa welcomed the sagacity behind allotting only eight acres of land to a family to create small farmers and raise a bulwark against feudal system.

They said that the enforcement of agricultural reforms was though a positive step it was incomplete without compete abolition of feudal system. Haris, farm workers, political workers and democratic forces had long been demanding complete abolition of the menace to make room for industrialisation, they stressed.

Last year, haris, farm workers, civil society and representatives of democratic forces published a land reforms declaration and written thousands of letters to late Benazir Bhutto, Mian Nawaz Sharif and other political leaders, urging them to introduce and implement land reforms in their true spirit, they said.

They feared that without uprooting feudal system, poverty alleviation, industrialisation, prosperity and a strong democratic system would remain an elusive dream.

They believed that the democracy and development had taken deep roots in other South Asian countries after they got rid of feudal system. Benazir Bhutto had said in a statement that her government would not only implement the land reforms announced on Jan 5, 1977 but would also introduce more reforms, they said.

They demanded that the land allotted by Gen Ziaul Haq to army personnel and civil bureaucracy and that allotted by Gen Pervez Musharraf in the name of corporate farming as well as forest lands should be taken back and distributed among landless haris, farm workers and the unemployed, including women.

They demanded that the poor who had been allotted land in the past should be given possession of their property, illegal watercourses dug during dictators’ regimes should be closed and supply of water to the lands of poor haris and tail-end farmers should be ensured.

They said that the grant of agricultural loans to haris and elimination of forced labour, provision of education, health cover, crop insurance and social security should also be made a part of agricultural reforms.

They said that the government should amend the Sindh Tenancy Act to protect genuine rights of haris. The Sindh Assembly was considering the proposals in this regard, they said.