HYDERABAD, Oct 5: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture on Sunday rejected sugarcane’s support price of Rs81 per 40 kilogram fixed for 2009 and demanded that the minimum price should be Rs84 per 40kg.

The leaders of the chamber demanded at a meeting that the sugar mills should be made operational from Oct 15 instead of Nov 10 to enable growers to harvest their crop on time.

The meeting was unanimous in its opinion that if the mills started on Nov 10 it would push back sowing of wheat crop and lead to acute shortage of wheat in the province.

The meeting expressed concern over shortage of water and continued rotation programme and observed that this would seriously affect the sowing of wheat.

The meeting demanded effective steps to ensure water supply and an end to rotation programme. Referring to high number oil wells in Tando Mir Alam Mari the meeting demanded that an oil refinery should be established in the area.

Work on a refinery project had been started during the tenure of previous PPP government but it was abandoned after the government’s overthrow, the meeting said.

The general secretary of the Chamber Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui said that keeping in view steep rise in the prices of urea, fertilisers and pesticides fixation of minimum price of wheat at Rs950 per 40kg was inadequate and demanded that the minimum price should be fixed at Rs1,200 per 40kg.

The meeting urged the government to ask sugar mill owners to pay growers their dues and demanded that the rate of rice should be increased and Pasco should be directed to set up centres for purchasing rice from growers.

The meeting was presided over by senior vice-president of the chamber Mir Murad Ali Talpur and attended by Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqi, Syed Nazeer Haider Shah, Mohammad Anwar Bachani, Qazi Abdul Majeed, Mohammad Khan Sarejo and a number of other growers.