MULTAN, Jan 8: The Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association has expressed concern over the piling up of stocks across the country.
“At present, 2.18 million bales are lying unsold with the ginners, the highest ever in the history of Pakistan,” PCGA chairman Sheikh Muhammad Saeed claimed in a statement on Tuesday.
The unsold stocks were creating financial difficulties and crisis and has frozen the working capital of the ginners. “The government should take immediate measures to mitigate the crisis.”
According to him, the Trading Corporation of Pakistan “is the last hope for ginners. The management of TCP should honour its promise to procure one million bales of cotton for the 2001-2002 season.”
He said only the public sector intervention could now improve the domestic market for the benefit of all the stake holders. Early disposal of the current unsold stock would enable the ginners to buy further phutti (seed cotton) from the growers.
Sheikh Saeed said that at the start of the season the government had given a procurement target of one million bales to TCP. “The corporation has so far bought only a little more than 0.1m bales.”
The PCGA urged the government to direct the TCP to lift the available stocks at the minimum support price of Rs1,855 per 40 kilogramme of lint cotton.
One of the main reason behind glut of the commodity was the disinterested textile sector, which was, the main buyer of cotton in the local market.
He further urged the government that if the textile sector was facing problems in buying the available stocks its difficulties should be removed.
He demanded that the textile sector should also be directed not to import cotton anymore till the disposal of domestic stocks.
Directive: The district coordination officer of Multan has directed all federal and provincial government departments to chalk out an emergency plan in order to combat any untoward situation owing to tension on the borders.
Presiding over a meeting on Tuesday, DCO Maj Azam Suleman (retired) directed officials of various federal and provincial government departments to envisage the plan within three days.
He directed them to select suitable places for trenches in their respective offices. He said the civil defence department and volunteers would help them in digging the trenches.
He also directed them to shift the official record at some safer places from the present offices.
The civil defence officer informed the meeting that an emergency reporting unit had been set up at the civil defence office.
Arrangements for 400 additional beds at the Nishtar Hospital and 300 at the civil hospital had been completed.
The DCO directed to camouflage all important and sensitive buildings of the city. It was also decided that the Radio Pakistan, Multan station, would air awareness programmes about ‘how to mitigate war emergency’.
Interestingly, the Multan administration has paid heed to the emergency at the top level when the escalation on borders has started melting down after the Saarc moot in Nepal and restraint requests from the international community.