BAHAWALPUR: As the wheat harvesting season begins across Bahawalpur division, the farming community here is in a state of confusion in the absence of a wheat policy of the Punjab government.
The delay in announcement of this year’s policy has encouraged middlemen, whose role the government had claimed to have eliminated or restricted in the last few years. The sudden arrival of a large number of middlemen in wheat-harvesting areas here has become a matter of concern for growers.
These traders from across the province were reportedly attempting to enter into bargains on lower rates with cash payments with the wheat growers desperate to dispose of their stock at the earliest. Majority of the growers were awaiting the government policy expecting higher purchase rates but many of them were contemplating the offers of the middlemen.
Pakistan Kissan Board Senior Vice President Jam Hazoor Bakhsh told Dawn that none of the Punjab government’s policies seemed farmer-oriented. While the growers were still trying to recover their arrears from sugar mills, the wheat policy crisis loomed.
He claimed that any further delay in announcing the policy would cause financial losses to the growers. The government should have announced it by April 1 and launched by April 15 as had been happening in the previous years. He demanded Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif announce the policy immediately to encourage the farming community.
Meanwhile, Pakistan Kissan Ittehad Chairman Chaudhry Muhammad Anwar along with activists of Bahawalpur Suba Mahaz and Seraiki Suba Multan in a joint press conference here on Saturday demanded timely availability of gunny bags for wheat procurement campaign in Bahawalpur.
He said the food department handed over gunny bags to the respective deputy commissioners, who allegedly did not provide the growers with the required number of bags. He also expressed concern over the shortage of canal water and demanded the construction of dams to store water for crops.
Anwar also complained of the alleged excesses of sugar mills owners with growers, including humiliation, to deprive them of their due rates and deduction in weight of the produce on the mills scales. He claimed that local sugar mills had yet to pay arrears amounting to hundreds and thousands of rupees.
Separately, Punjab Food Director Asif Belal Lodhi paid a visit to the city and other areas. Bahawalpur division Deputy Director (Food) Chaudhry Muhammad Ajmal told Dawn that the director’s visit was in connection with a survey for the upcoming wheat procurement programme in the division.
Quoting the director, he hoped that the wheat policy would be announced by April 2 as the government was awaiting the return of Chief Minister Sharif. He said the target of wheat procurement from Bahawalpur division was 7.7 million tonnes from 80 procurement centres in Bahawalpur, Bahawalnagar and Rahim Yar Khan districts was ready.
SECURITY: The district administration has heightened security around churches and other religious places on the occasion of Easter on Sunday (today).
Deputy Commissioner Rana Muhammad Saleem Afzal established a security control centre and directed deployment of extra personnel of police and other law enforcement agencies around churches across the district.
Published in Dawn, April 1st, 2018
