JHANG, Jan 4: Several farmer bodies have requested President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to announce a new liberal package for the Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited defaulters to cover more of them on easy terms.

The previous package announced by the president in September 2004, they claimed, had brought relief only to a very small percentage of the defaulters in the district according to the figures given by the ZTBL regional office.

According to the Anjuman-i-Kashtkaran and the Kissan Board Pakistan, the president had announced a relief package for the agriculture bank defaulters offering a waiver of interest on loans borrowed before 2000 and on an outstanding amount of less than Rs500,000.

However, they said, the package found a very small number of beneficiaries as out of 33,107 defaulters, only 4,081 (13 per cent) were covered under the relief umbrella. Interestingly, only 1,491 people had intimated the bank about their decision to avail themselves of the facility by depositing the advance, disclosed a bank source.

Hundreds of families of ancestral land owners in Jhang had been facing threat of being removed from the revenue record due to possible auction if another package was not announced and that, too, with an enhanced limit of maximum outstanding amount, recovery in easy instalments (at least in three years if not in five), and eligibility of all defaulters, said Anjuman-i-Kashtkaran's Barrister Syed Sardar Ahmad Shah.

He told this correspondent that the government would have to spend lesser funds on such an incentive for the agriculturists than it had been expending on business and industry.

Answering a question about such a large number of defaulters in the district, Qazi Ali Hassan, a member of the Punjab assembly from Chiniot, said a weak crop affected by natural calamities forced a farmer to go in for loan to pay the dues in time.

At the same time, he said, misuse of agricultural loan was a major factor that led a farmer to default. such a loan could only be misused with the connivance of the bank officials, he added.

A mobile credit officer of the ZTBL on whose recommendation the loan was sanctioned was also responsible for submitting a utilization report to the regional office soon after the disbursement; and verifying the availability of machinery, implements or inputs with the borrower.

"If the utilization report is negative, the borrower has to return the amount. And in order to ensure a positive report, the loanee has to pay Rs10,000 to Rs15,000 illegal gratification in case of a tractor loan.

This amount is in addition to the bribe that an applicant for loan has to pay to the branch manager and the MCO for processing and sanctioning." The farmers have also urged the government to check misuse of loans by declaring it a cognizable offence.