HYDERABAD, Aug 2: The Sindh Abadgar Board has demanded of the government to appoint a high-level committee comprising representatives of the local government, growers organizations and government functionaries to supervise the rehabilitation work of water channels and saline water drains.

The demand was made at a meeting of the executive committee of the board held here on Saturday under the chairmanship of Abdul Majeed Nizamani.

The meeting observed that keeping in view the past experiences, there would be continuous rains for three to four years during monsoon season and if the rehabilitation work was not carried out on a sound footings, the agriculture sector of Sindh would be totally destroyed.

The meeting reiterated that as per complaints of the growers the main cause of destruction was the inefficiency of the irrigation department which had failed to repair the water channels, saline water drains and the main LBOD outlet.

It demanded the master plan of the LBOD should be made public. The meeting demanded of the federal government to conduct a detailed survey of the losses suffered by the growers due to heavy rains and exempt, the farmers from the payment of bank loans and water charges and declare the entire Sindh province as calamity-affected area.

It demanded that compensation should be paid to the growers for the losses and loans should be advanced for the Rabi crops and purchase of other inputs. It reminded the government that the growers of Sindh had suffered huge losses during the last four year due to acute shortage of water, low prices of crops and inordinate increase in the prices of agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, seeds, pesticides, diesel, electricity, land tax, water tax, agriculture tax and GST.

The meeting maintained that the over all increase in the above items was between 40 per cent to 100 per cent. It demanded that uniformity should be observed in all the four provinces about agriculture tax, land tax, water charges, excise duty on tractors, power bills as well as other facilities.

The meeting regretted that 30 per cent quota of shops, reserved for growers in various vegetable markets of Sindh, was not being given to them. It demanded the possession of shops should be handed over to the growers who had completed all formalities.