HYDERABAD, July 8: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) on Sunday demanded that the government should step up efforts to rehabilitate the rain-and flood-affected people on a war footing.

The SCA senior vice-president Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur said at the chambers’ meeting here that the magnitude of devastation in Qambar-Shahdadkot, Dadu and Kachho areas caused by heavy rains and ensuing floods was much larger than that of last year's earthquake.

The catastrophe had left tens of thousands of people homeless and forced them to live under open sky as the government had failed to provide them relief, he said and added that whatever the government had done for them so far was too little too late.

The meeting decided to send a delegation to the calamity-hit areas to provide financial aid and relief goods to the affected people and charged that the relief goods meant for them did not reach them.

The meeting recalled that the Sindh government had declared some districts as calamity-hit areas during last year’s heavy rains and exempted the growers from the payment of taxes for the Kharif season but the revenue department did extract taxes.

The meeting demanded that the amount thus recovered should be refunded to growers without delay. Kazi Abdul Majeed, Dr Shahnawaz Shah, Anwar Bachani, Aijaz Nabi Shah and Mir Imdad Talpur were among those who attended the meeting.