October 18, 2008	Saturday	Shawwal 18, 1429

KARACHI, Oct 17: Speakers at a meeting on Friday urged the authorities to ensure that the needy people get the land that was to be distributed by the government under a land reform policy.

They were speaking at the meeting on “Land for the landless” organised by the Shirkatgah and the Thardeep to discuss the government policy under which it has planned free distribution of over 200,000 acres of land among the poorest of the poor farmers, particularly women.

They said that keeping in view the functioning of governments they feared that only the influential and politically favoured people would benefit from the scheme while the majority of the needy people — who naturally have no contact with the people in power — would not benefit from this otherwise, at least on paper and whatever information was available about it, a good policy.

Noman Ahmad of NED and Jehanara Hayee of the APWA stressed that the needy people should be selected in a transparent manner and their names should be verified and cross-checked against the information of NGOs and civil society organisations to give it credibility.

Mr Karamat Ali of PILER suggested that all available state land data should be made public. He said land reforms should be introduced to curtail the land holding ceiling. It should be ensured that land must be used for the purpose it was being allotted to, and should not be misused as usually happen in the country, he said. In this regard he cited an example saying that earlier land around the city was allotted to poultry farming but now majority of these lands had been converted into industrial, commercial or even residential units after bribing authorities.

Nazeer Memon, an agriculturist, said that most of the land to be distributed would be infertile and would demand huge amount of inputs to make it cultivable.

A senior journalist Sheen Farrukh feared that poor women, who would get the land, would be exploited and pointed out that many a time property was the major issue behind the karo-kari killings in which women were murdered.

Ramazan Ali, an NGO worker, said that in a country where from a police station to a lucrative spot for begging was sold to the highest bidder, it was hard to imagine that the poor could get free land. He termed the free land distribution policy a ‘political gimmick’ and urged that the poor should be given the ownership rights of that state land on which their huts were built.

Najma Sadique of Shirkatgah suggested that organic farming be preferred and crops should be free from synthetic chemical inputs which poison the lands and play havoc with the crops particularly food crops.

Zulfiqar Halepoto, Shahbano, Aslam Baloch, Ishaq Soomro, Aziz Memon and others spoke on the occasion.

Minister Syed Murad Ali and MPA Sikander Mahendro who, according to the organisers had confirmed that they would attend the meeting, did not turn up. However, a couple of relevant government officials were present but did not give any input to dispel doubts raised by speakers regarding the implementation of the government’s land reform policy.