HYDERABAD, March 9 Sindh Hari Committee chairman Azhar Jatoi has warned that if politicians fail to learn a lesson from the past, they run the risk of creating opportunity for dictatorship to capture the country once again.

He said at a meeting of the central committee of the peasant organisation at Baba-i-Sindh House here on Sunday that people, particularly of Sindh, had rendered great sacrifices for the restoration of democracy and their leader Benazir Bhutto had laid down her very life for the cause.

He said that it was in irony that democracy was now being murdered by democrats themselves. Unless the judiciary was restored and the supremacy of parliament and law were guaranteed, poor hari and worker could never get justice, he said. Mr Jatoi demanded that Sindh's land and forests should be distributed among local people and blamed inefficiency by the agriculture department for a virus attack on the new wheat crop, causing huge losses to farmers.

He demanded that the agriculture department adopt preventive measures to save the crop.

The meeting voiced support for the lawyers' long march and formed a five-member committee headed by Alam Khan Memon to chalk out a comprehensive program to participate in the long march and sit-in.

STP The Sindh Taraqqi Pasand Party spokesman Nandlal Malhi announced on Monday that party leaders and workers would participate in the lawyers' long march and sit-in for the independence of judiciary and reinstatement of deposed Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhry.

He said in a statement that STP workers right from Karachi to Ubauro would join the long march and a big caravan would join the sit-in at Islamabad.

Party chairman Dr Qadir Magsi with thousands of workers would accord a befitting welcome to lawyers' rally at Hyderabad toll plaza, he said.

The independence of judiciary had now been linked with the reinstatement of Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Choudhry because he had become a symbol of the judiciary's independence, he said.

HOSPITAL WAST Umeed Foundation, a non-governmental organisation working for bringing improvement in the hospitals' waste management system has handed over 600 waste bins and 100 syringe or needle cutters to the management of Liaquat University Hospital's city and Jamshoro branches. The donation has been recently given.