HYDERABAD: The district agriculture facility boards will be revived soon at local level to resolve issues relating to the sale of adulterated pesticides, substandard seeds as well as increasing cost of agricultural inputs.

This was stated by agriculture secretary Saqib Soomro while speaking to growers at the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) in Hyderabad through video link from his office in Karachi on Saturday.

Mr Soomro, who was accompanying irrigation secretary Babar Effendi, told the growers representatives from Sukkur, Sanghar, Ghotki and other districts that a notification of intervention price for cotton and rice would be issued soon as a meeting in this regard was being held on Tuesday (Sept 2).

Mr Effendi told the growers that the directors of three Area Water Boards – Nara, Left Bank Canal and Ghotki, had been directed to hold meetings with SCA representatives every month to get the problems relating to water availability resolved on a priority basis.

He said a meeting to sort out the issues raised by the SCA would be held Sept 10.

He promised action against the dealers selling substandard seeds and pesticides, and said that growers’ complaints about supplies of sugarcane to sugar factories from Punjab would be looked into.

Legal action would taken to stop such supplies and this would enable cane growers to make supplies to the factories within 24 hours after indent instead of waiting for six weeks, he said.

The irrigation secretary said that officials of the Sindh Irrigation and Drainage Authority (Sida) and the irrigation department including the Kotri barrage chief engineer and Sida managing director would also attend the meeting to brief the participants about the initiatives being taken to address their issues.

Growers representatives from Mirpurkhas, Naukot and Umerkot also complained to the secretary about unavailability of water in their areas. They were told that the issue would be looked into seriously.

SCA president Dr Nadeem Qamar joined in the video conference from his Karachi office.

Published in Dawn, August 31st , 2014