LARKANA, Dec 19: The Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) has urged the government to declare Sindh a calamity-hit area as ongoing rains have ruined rice crop and also damaged the recently-sown wheat crop.

Talking to Dawn on Friday, SAB vice-president Gada Hussain Mahesar said that uninterrupted winter downpour throughout the rainbelt in Sindh and Balochistan had devastated 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the crop.

He said that Sindh was already lagging around one and half month behind the rice crop schedule as compared with Balochistan as it got water in June while Punjab in May. Punjab applied mechanical methodologies using combined harvesters while Sindh used manual mechanism, which had already delayed the process in Sindh, he said.

The government should immediately undertake a survey of Sindh to assess the losses that recent rains had inflicted on rice crop, he said.

He said that villages had been surrounded by rainwater and the situation had severely affected farmers and growers. The stocks lying in the houses were also affected and these families could face a difficult situation ahead for getting food, he said.

Mahesar urged the government to come to the rescue of these farmers on an urgent basis.

He said that in year 2007 the country had earned $750 million from the export of IRRI-6 rice and this year he said under the condition it could hardly be 50,000 tons.

He said the rain had badly damaged rice stocks in the open fields and 900 rice mills in both the provinces. These stocks were quite unfit for export because of discolouration and the qualitative damages, he said.

The SAB vice-president feared that labour, both seasonal and permanent, engaged in the rice industry would face a difficult situation.

He said that the large-scale damage to the recently-sown wheat crop would prove to be another blow to the country’s economy and to the growers, millers and traders.