KOHAT: The agriculture experts have expressed concern that rapidly growing housing societies and farmhouses are eating up the fertile land in Kohat, causing pollution and threatening food security.

They said the overseas Pakistanis and local business tycoons offered high prices to the owners of the land near the roads and other lucrative sites. They said the land used to produce abundant quantity of wheat and pulses.

Iftikhar Khan, president of farmers association, and director agriculture Zahidullah Khattak told Dawn that greed was turning the fertile lands in Jarma, Chambai, and along Rawalpindi, Hangu and Bannu roads into commercial areas.

They said hundreds of acres of agricultural land famous for producing vegetables in big quantities had been turned into housing colonies. They added that price of a marla had soared to Rs600,000.

They said the Kohat district had a total of 21,000 hectares of agriculture land, including forests and guava orchards, but large swathes of land were fast being turned into markets and housing units.

Agriculture director Zahidullah Khattak said the department had no such law to force the owners not to sell their fertile land.

Agriculture expert Iftikhar Khan said the government was equally responsible as it was giving fertile land to oil companies and constructing dams and colonies on the farmlands. They demanded that the administration should ask the developers to use barren land for constructing commercial and housing units, and bind the farmers to sell land only to those who wanted to use it for farming.

They asked for equipping the farmers with the latest techniques to improve agriculture yield.

They said the government should also encourage cultivation of cash crops like oranges, kinos, grapes, sugarcane and maize.

TWO HELD IN MURDER CASE: The Saddar police on Tuesday arrested a man, his son and close relatives of an elderly woman in the latter’s murder case. DSP Nazir Hussain and SHO Fayyaz Khan of Saddar police told a press conference that Naseer Khan of Togh Bala had reported on Jan 3 about the missing of his sister, Farzana Bibi.

Later, the police found a bullet-riddled body of a woman in a drain, which was later identified by her brother.

The police officials said investigation into the case led to the arrest of woman’s brother-in-law Gul Mohammad, and his son, Shehzad, who said they killed her after a brawl and dumped her body in a drain. The police registered a case against the accused. — Correspondent

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2021