HYDERABAD: The Sindh Hari Committee has condemned non-provision of gunny bags to wheat growers.

At a meeting held under the chairmanship of Azhar Jatoi here on Tuesday, the committee said that it appeared as if gunny bags were meant only for PPP jiyalas or influential landowners.

The meeting noted that growers had faced serious monetary losses in Kharif and Rabi crops and now they were being denied gunny bags.

It said growers were taken to the verge of starvation and they did not get any relief, although they contributed a lot to the economy of the country.

The meeting said that after the 18th Amendment, the agriculture sector was a devolved subject and demanded that bags should be provided to farmers.

Withdrawal of Seed Act urged

Speakers at a conference have demanded that if the government was agriculture friendly, it should withdraw the Seed Act 2014 Bill forthwith.

Addressing the one-day moot convened by an NGO, Green Rural Development Organisa­tion (GRDO), on Tuesday at the local press club, they said that through this legislation, multinational companies (MNCs) would make farmers and peasants subservient to them.

Those who spoke on the occasion included GRDO’s Ghulam Rasool Malookani, Mohammad Boota Sarwar, Wali Hyder and Veeru Kolhi. They resolved that Seed Act 2014, which supported MNCs, would harm the agriculture sector and adversely affect peasants and farmers. They demanded that the bill should be reviewed before it was tabled in the Senate.

They said the situation regarding growers and agriculture should be minutely reviewed because the farm sector was the backbone of the economy.

They regretted that despite having agrarian economy, Pakistan lacked an agriculture policy and the elected representatives did not frame any such policy.

They said that more than 50 per cent people of the country were associated with agriculture for whom government allocated just one per cent.

Published in Dawn, April 15th, 2015

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