SWABI, March 28: The NWFP Anjuman Kashtkaran (AK) threaten on Thursday that if the tobacco growers are victimized by the purchasing companies, they will give a call for cultivation of poppy.

Speaking at a press conference, the NWFP AK President Abdul Haleem Mayar and General Secretary Ismail Jan Khan said more than 75 per cent people of the NWFP were employed in the agriculture sector especially, tobacco.  

They said the peasants were being victimized as the government had failed to take steps for the modernization and application of latest technology in the agriculture sector. Loan was also not provided to the peasants on easy instalments, they said.

Tobacco was the major cash crop which contributed Rs25 billion to  the federal government as excise duty, but the tobacco growers were victimized on one pretext or another, said Ismail.

He opposed the linkage of the NPK fertilizers with the agreements of  Virginia tobacco growers. “Each agreement holder was forced to purchase 10 bags of the NPK, costing Rs8,000 but the same bags are available for Rs6,700 in the market. It means that the agreement holders have been exploited,” he said.

He predicted that according to the available estimate about 13 million kilograms of tobacco would be surplus in the current year, so the tobacco buyers, especially Pakistan Tobacco Company and Lakson Tobacco Company should devise a plan to pick up all the tobacco from the growers during the purchasing season. He said if a strategy was not adopted in this regard, clashes between the companies staff and the growers would be imminent.

He said that according to the tobacco marketing law all the purchasing companies should start buying tobacco on the date fixed by Pakistan Tobacco Board but the rule had been violated. It was the responsibility of the PTB to bound all the buyers to uphold the principle, he stressed.

Ismail Jan said some bureaucrats wanted to shift the PTB office from the NWFP to Punjab, which would create problems for the tobacco growers of frontier. He said the PTB office must remain in Peshawar because 98 per cent of tobacco was grown in the NWFP.

He opposed the anti-smoking ordinance, claiming it would badly affect the cultivation of tobacco and livelihood of thousands of people.