LAHORE: The farming community has rejected the Rs50 billion package announced by the federal government on Thursday terming it a way to give bailout package to industrialists.

The Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee (PKRC) says the package is too meagre to meet needs of agriculture sector and has demanded raising it to Rs500bn and paying the amount directly to the small farmer badly affected by Covid-19.

PKRC leaders Farooq Tariq, Mohsin Abdali, Rauf Lund and Saima Zia argued that the Covid-19 package is not a regular agriculture package and has to be distributed among the affectees of coronavirus and thus it requires different modalities for distribution.

But the package announced by the government will serve the cause of the capitalists as the money will be transferred to fertiliser, pesticide and tractor manufacturing companies instead of directly serving the landowners whose produce got damaged for not either finding labour for harvesting or proper markets due to lockdowns, they said.

Want direct cash disbursement, demand increase in allocation to Rs500bn

They demanded that the money be directly given to the small farmers, owners of orchards and growers of vegetables.

They lamented that most of the amount had been reserved for chemicals that have already poisoned soil and affected health of consumers.

Pakistan Kissan Ittehad general secretary Mian Umair fears that the amount will be usurped by departments involved in its distribution in connivance with fertiliser and pesticide companies leaving the farming community high and dry.

He says that only a few farmers bother to go through the cumbersome procedure of verifications for getting a subsidy of Rs200 per voucher and amount will be embezzled by the corrupt bureaucracy and the capitalists.

He demands that the fertiliser companies must be forced to print prices on their bags and take action against the dealers found to be selling the product in black market.

FPCCI Standing Committee on Agriculture’s former chairman Ahmad Jawad says the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) seems confused as on one hand it rejected the cotton support price summary arguing agriculture is a devolved subject and in the next meeting approved a package for the agriculture sector.

Published in Dawn, May 15th, 2020