MULTAN, March 18: Fakhr Imam, the former speaker of the National Assembly, has urged the government to announce wheat procurement policy.

In a press statement here on Monday, he said the country achieved autarky in the year 1999-2000 after a gap of 17 years due to hard work of the farming community. Since then the growers had been producing surplus wheat enabling the country to export the same.

He said according to the agriculture minister, the crop size of the current Rabi season was estimated at 20 million tons. While there were already 3 to 3.5 million tons of carryover stocks in the country.

He expressed concern over the government failure to export the surplus wheat. The former speaker said the government should take steps to ensure procurement of wheat at the official support price of Rs300 per 40kg.

He demanded the government should procure at least five million tons of wheat from the Rabi season 2001-2002, otherwise, the growers would suffer losses.

Engineers: The Pakistan Engineering Forum has urged the government to approve the service structure of engineers.

In a press statement issued on Monday, PEF central president Syed Imtiaz Husain Shah said the engineers were disappointed over delay in the approval of their service structure.

He railed the government’s decision to allocate seats for technocrats in the national assembly, urging those concerned to announce a clear-cut policy in this regard.

He said the forum had constituted a coordination committee to prepare proposals in consultation with other professional bodies for presentation before government. This would provide a guideline for elections on seats reserved for technocrats, he said.

The forum’s central working committee would confer best technocrat medals on toppers of all the engineering universities from the next year, he said.

He underscored the need to encourage research in universities and to improve training methodology so as to save huge resources currently being spent on foreign consultants. —Correspondent