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MULTAN, Jan 20: The plant breeders rights act is nearing completion and will be approved in the coming federal cabinet meeting. Federal Agriculture Minister Sikandar Hayat Bosan said this while addressing a farmers’ convention for the cultivation of sunflowers here on Saturday.
The minister said that a new culture regarding the seed research and development would be introduced in the country after the implementation of this act. This would also provide seed companies to keep in mind the benefit of farmers and their reasonable profit as well.
He said the government was launching a Rs800 million crop maximization project while loans on soft terms would be provided to farmers having less than 12.5 acre land in country’s 13,000 villages under the project.
Mr Bosan said that Multan, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan and Dera Ghazi Khan districts were also included in the Rs700 million drip irrigation project. Each farmer would get 15 percent non-returnable expenditures of farm that he would establish under the project.
Around 40,000 `khalas’ would be concreted till June 30, 2007 under a national programme while Rs6,600 would be spent on concreting further 87,000 khalas in the country.
He said the government was determined to make agriculture a profitable business to attract investment in this sector. Some investors were ready to invest at least Rs100 million in the livestock sector and the government was inking memorandum of understanding with them, he said.
SEMINAR: A seminar on the awareness of AIDS, organized by the Punjab AIDS Consortium, was held here on Saturday.
District Naib Nazim Syed Wajid Ali Shah underlined the need to extend the awareness campaign to rural areas and the union council level as AIDS was a fatal disease.
Punjab AIDS Consortium chairman Raja Khalid Mehmood informed participants that the number of registered AIDS patients was more than 4,000 in the country while unofficial reports put the number to about 80,000.
He said that AIDS was a disease and not a crime and, therefore, it should not be hidden. He said that Punjab AIDS Consortium had established three regional offices in the province.
Umer Ali Khan Baloch, the regional coordinator of South Punjab, said that the disease was spreading in the southern belt as a large number of people of this area were living abroad. He urged the need to increase the awareness campaign against the AIDS in South Punjab.
Dr Aftab Ahmed, the regional coordinator of the Punjab AIDS Control Programme, said that government institutes were playing their due role for the control of AIDS.
Provincial parliamentary secretary Tahir Hussain Milezai and district social welfare officer Mrs Salma Yasmeen Ghori were the chief guests.
