HYDERABAD: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) in its meeting on Sunday urged international aid agencies to ensure parity in the execution of their schemes in different areas of the country.

They said that farmers’ organisations would extend cooperation to them if they did not get a desirable response from government.

Dr Syed Nadeem Qamar chaired the meeting, which was attended by Mir Imdad, Nabi Bux Sathio, Dr Naveed Hyder Shah and Mir Abdul Karim Talpur.

The meeting noted that the USAID had spent only $25 million in the mango sector for increasing productivity and improving farm practices. But on the other hand, the world body had cancelled different agreements signed with growers of Sindh especially regarding tunnel farming in vegetables, it said.

The meeting observed that even payorders deposited by farmers had been returned after some months on the grounds that tunnel farming in Sindh was not necessary.

The SCA made it clear that it had welcomed all kinds of assistances given by the USAID as well as Australian, European and international agencies for their programmes in the agriculture and livestock sectors, particularly those meant for Sindh.

The meeting regretted that if such projects had failed due to negligence of government departments, farmers should not be held responsible for it.

The meeting criticised performance of the Pakistan Horticulture Development and Export Company, Agri Support Fund and Small and Medium Enterprises which, according to it, were only doing paper work instead of extending assistance to farmers for increasing productivity.

The meeting urged the government to establish special desks of the Trade Development Authority of Pakistan (TDAP) in Karachi and Hyderabad before the advent of the mango season in order to update mango growers on export of their produce.

Mirpurkhas

SCA Mirpurkhas district president Mir Haji Zafarullah Talpure has expressed his organisation’s concern over a shortage of irrigation water in the tail-end areas of Jamrao and Naseer canal, saying that the ongoing sowing of cotton and others crops in lower Sindh was badly affected for want of water.

In a press statement issued here on Sunday, he said release of water in Jamrao and Naseer canals had been drastically curtailed.

He said farmers had worked hard for proper de-silting of the two canals and their distributaries to ensure a smooth and adequate flow of water to the tail-end areas in summer, and alleged that irrigation officials were now demanding higher amounts of money for releasing water and threatening to stop supply if their demand was not met.

He urged the chief minister, irrigation minister and secretary to take notice of the situation.