LARKANA, April 12: Traders, growers and rice millers have threatened to stop paying market committee fees if what they called "illegal checkposts" throughout Sindh are not closed.

Speaking here at a press conference on Monday, Gada Hussain Mahisar, the president of the Sindh Balochistan Rice Millers and Traders Association (SBRMTA), told newsmen that the market committee act strictly prohibited establishment of what he called "scissor points" for collecting market fees.

He regretted that in Sindh market committees were hardly constituted, and contractors were collecting fees by setting up illegal checkpoints. Mr Mahisar said the committees and the contractors were entitled to collect fees only, either at grain markets or at purchase centres, but they, he alleged, illegally collected fees.

Showing copies of correspondence with the Sindh chief minister, the provincial minister for agriculture, the agriculture secretary and the director-general of agriculture extension, he said all such efforts proved a futile exercise.

Mr Mahisar said the minister, the secretary and the DG for agriculture had sent letters to the district coordination officers, district nazims and district police officers throughout the province and had asked them to close down all illegal checkpoints which, they pointed out, had been set up in violation of the Agriculture Produce Market Act 1939.

According to the trader body chief, the law is applicable only to "original product", but, to the utter astonishment of the growers, traders and the rice millers, the contractors are very frequently charging market fees on the "by-products" of all produce.