HYDERABAD, April 20 The Badin chapter of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture on Monday welcomed announcement by the prime minister that the land of defaulting growers of Thatta district would not be auctioned and assailed legislators of Badin for their indifference towards growers' problems.

A meeting of the chamber held in Badin under Mohammad Khan Sarejo, pointed out that the bank managers proposed to auction lands in Thatta and Badin districts in accordance with the recovery ordinance issued by the former President Pervez Musharraf in 2001.

The meeting said that the auction could not be stopped until the ordinance had been repealed by the National Assembly. Badin and Thatta districts had been the worst affected districts of the province over the past 20 years and Sindh government had declared them as calamity-hit on 16 occasions, the meeting said.

The meeting said that the growers of the two districts had to face acute shortage of water some times and occasional heavy rains and cyclones, which had not left them in a position to pay their loans.

The meeting regretted that the members of provincial and national assemblies from Badin were not even prepared to meet growers.

The meeting pointed out that the chamber had sent letters and faxed messages to the National Assembly speaker and the Sindh home minister but they had no time to meet their constituents.

The other MPAs and MNAs were helpless even before the SHOs and the mukhtiarkars, the meeting lamented.

The meeting demanded that the loan amount up to Rs500,000 should be waived while the remaining amount should be recovered in easy installments without mark-up.