THATTA, June 18: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Small Growers Association, Sindh Hari Front and a number of other growers’ representative forums have termed the president’s relief package for growers of calamity-hit areas ‘peanut’ and demanded to reschedule bank loans above Rs100,000 for one year without token money.

Through a joint representation addressed to President Gen Pervez Musharraf, the signatories, Jam Ghulam Abbas, Haji Nawaz Ali and Sher Khan Lund, said that Sindh in general and the two districts of the coastal belt — Thatta and Badin — in particular were badly hit by periodical catastrophes and officially had been declared calamity-hit areas thrice in about two and half decades.

The worst-ever cyclone in recent years, the Surjani Bund break, super flood, non-release of irrigation water downstream Kotri for last five years and the intensified back flow of oceanic water, rendering fertile lands barren, were the reasons that the two districts were declared calamity-hit areas.

The representation said these two districts needed attention of authorities concerned.

It further said that relief packages extended by former governments were comparatively better and the current relief package required enhancement of the principle amount borrowed up to Rs250,000 so that the agricultural community could have a sigh of relief.

The forums deplored the recoveries being made by revenue officials and the ADBP instead of the fact that the areas had been declared calamity-hit.

Moreover, the forums said, the time was not of harvesting of any crop that could have enabled growers to pay back their dues.