LARKANA: Wheat growers have accused the provincial food department officials of refusing to provide them gunny bags, forcing them to sell off their hard earned harvest at pathetically low prices in the open market.

Like every year, the food department had kept up with its exploitative practice to make provision of gunny bags so cumbersome that the growers were compelled to let themselves get fleeced by wheat traders, complained growers.

The president of the Larkana chapter of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA), Siraj Rashdi, told Dawn on Monday that like always, the food department was issuing gunny bags only to its favourites.

Denial of gunny bags was forcing growers to sell off their harvest at low price of Rs1,150 per 40 kilogram in the open market, Rs100 less than the government’s procurement rate of Rs1,250 per 40 kg, he said.

He accused traders of fleecing growers by purchasing wheat at low rate, piling up stocks and later smuggling them out to Afghanistan, and urged the government to lift ban on inter-district and inter-province movement of wheat.

Gada Hussain Mahesar, central vice president of Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB), lamented the government’s failure to form committees with growers as their members to monitor the issuance of gunny bags and other procurement related issues.

Despite having a bumper crop of around 2,400,000 tons in Sindh, no procurement centres had been set up yet nor gunny bags had been supplied so far. The situation had forced the growers to sell off the fruit of their sweat at low price to pay back the loans they had taken to sow the crop, he said.

This year, he said, about 70 per cent of the land which had been used for the cultivation of rice had been reutilised for wheat hence the bumper crop.

Altaf Metlo, a wheat trader at grain market, said that hardly 25 per cent of the crop had reached the market. “We are buying wheat at Rs1,150 per 40 kg,” he said.

Growers, Haidar Ali Jatoi, Mohammad Bachal and Liaquat Korai who had brought their wheat to the market said they were compelled to sell it at Rs1,150 as the food department had refused to provide them gunny bags.

Haidar Jatoi said that despite making full payment of Rs28,000 for gunny bags in the bank concerned the officials at the godowns had refused to issue him gunny bags on one or the other pretext, forcing him to sell off his harvest it in the open market at low rates.

Fida Hussain Huilo, a grower from Qambar, said that he needed 1,000 gunny bags but the food officials demanded form-7 of the land which no grower or landlord could produce at this time of the year.

But the food officials dismissed most of the growers’ complaints and claimed the department had set up 59 procurement centres in the region to supply 1,550,000 gunny bags. All arrangements, including gunny bags, had been made for the growers, they claimed.

“We are here to facilitate growers. They should come to sell their produce and we will surely provide them gunny bags if they meet all requirements,” they said.

This correspondent made several attempts to contact the deputy director of food, Larkana region, but he did not respond.

Hyderabad

Hyderabad Deputy Commissioner Mohammad Nawaz Soho has formed a district level committee to ensure transparency in the distribution of gunny bags and redress growers’ grievances.

He said that he would himself chair the committee which would have as members, district food controller, assistant commissioners of talukas of Hyderabad and Latifabad, Mir Sobdar Khan Talpur and Badaruddin Memon, and representatives of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture and Sindh Abadgar Board.

The committee would ensure that no gunny bags were issued to any person without its approval. ACs would form similar committees at taluka level, he said.