DERA GHAZI KHAN: The inauguration of a project to make rocky land cultivable through the provision of stone picker machines free of cost to farmers will retrieve hundreds of acres, South Punjab Agriculture Secretary Saqib Ali told Dawn on Wednesday.

The machines will be manufactured through reverse engineering.

The secretary inaugurated the project by operating a stone picker machine.

With the completion of the project, farmers will be able to get good yields. Up to 200 farmers from the tribal areas of Dera Ghazi Khan were selected through a lucky draw system to purge their land of stones. A stone picker machine will run for 10 hours on each farmer’s land.

He said that in future, reverse engineering would be used in picker machines at the Agricultural Mechanisation Research Institute, Multan, so that the prices of these machines can be significantly reduced.

Divisional Engineer Nadeem Iqbal said two such machines worth Rs30 million would allocated to tribal areas.

A machine can collect stones of 30mm to 300mm from the ground and is run with a 100-horsepower tractor.

TWO KILLED: Two labourers were killed and nine others injured when a tractor-trailer plunged into a ditch in mountainous tribal area of Koh-i-Sulaiman tehsil.

Labourers were coming from hill station Yak Bai to their homes for Eid vacation when the vehicle’s brakes failed and it fell into a ditch.

Fida Hussain of Choti Zareen and Abid Hussain of Head Muhammadwala lost their lives while nine others were injured.

Rescue 1122 personnel and locals shifted the injured to the Ghazi Medical College’s hospital (trauma centre).

Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2022