MULTAN, July 23: Tenants of the state-managed agricultural farms will not accept any official offer for which they have to withdraw from their demand of ownership rights over the land they have been cultivating since long.

This was stated by Anjuman Mazareen Punjab through a press statement issued here on Tuesday in response to the reported government announcement to make the tenants’ settlements in the province model villages provided they accepted the status of lessees.

It may be added that Governor Khalid Maqbool presided over a meeting in Lahore the other day and stressed upon the authorities concerned to resolve the genuine problems of the farmers cultivating government lands as the state considered its responsibility to safeguard the legitimate rights of the ‘lessees’.

The provincial chief executive also directed measures to make the terms and conditions of the lease agreement between the government and the lessees (tenants) more equitable and practical. The meeting was informed that thousands of lessees (tenants) at 42 experimental farms of the agriculture department were engaged in producing various crops and quality seed since generations for the last more than 70 years.

The meeting was also attended by Director-General, Rangers, Maj-Gen Hussain Mehdi, Home Secretary Brig Ijaz Ahmed Shah retired, IGP Asif Hayat, Agriculture Secretary Juniad Iqbal, and Punjab Seed Corporation MD Brig Amanullah Niazi retired.

Rejecting the government offer of the development package, anjuman leaders Abdul Jabbar, Younas Iqbal and Dr Christopher John said the Punjab government should initiate a ‘meaningful dialogue’ with the tenants through its competent representatives rather than intimidating them through senior military officials.

In a joint statement, they said it seemed that the rangers had been given overall authority to decide the fate of the state-managed agricultural and livestock farms. It seemed, they added, the government was ‘hatching a conspiracy’ to deal with the tenants separately on farm-to-farm basis.

They said they wanted to make it crystal clear that any agreement between the tenants and the government would have to be applied to all the farms.

Meanwhile, the irrigation department authorities have reportedly released water into the channels irrigating Peerowal farms of the Punjab Seed Corporation in Khanewal district after a month.

It may be mentioned here that the Peerowal tenants along with tenants of other state-managed farms in the province have launched a drive to get ownership rights over their tenancies, saying they have been cultivating these farm lands for nearly a century.