By By Imtiaz Hussain
Earlier, Minister of State for Food and Agriculture Rafique Jamali met rice mill owners and assured them of getting PASSCO's paddy procurement centres opened in a couple of days.Khan Muhammad Phulpoto, a representative of rice millers sharing his views, said before meeting the minister they took up the matter in order to fix support price of Irri-6 at Rs600 to Rs1,000 per 40 kg; basmati rice at Rs1,000 per 40 kg and Russian paddy at Rs1,200 per 40 kg.
He said for meeting their targets the growers launched a long march with a view to registering the protest and drawing the attention of the authorities concerned but they did not pay heed to the issue. He said last year the growers and rice mill owners suffered a colossal loss, and PASSCO set the procurement target of 500,000 tons and fixed price at Rs700. He insisted that the fixed rate was not acceptable to the growers, but they had to compromise.
He said this year the growers produced a good crop of paddy as compared to the previous year but the government is providing Rs600 per 40kg and the procurement target has been reduced to 100,000 tons which is not a just decision. He said it was decided in the meeting that 40 per cent rice would be purchased by PASSCO and 40 per cent by the Sindh government, but the government did not take pains to establish procurement centres.
The rice millers and farmers fall victim to the delaying tactics adopted by the government as the growers sell rice at low rates so as to scrape a living because they are compelled to do the same since their crop may rot if they do not approach the procurement centres.
Interestingly, the Sindh government does not bother to buy basmati rice from the growers as well as millers, while the Punjab government purchases this rice in the open market. However, the Sindh government later buys the same commodity from the Punjab government at high rates.
The Sindh chief minister currently visited Larkana where he assured growers of getting support price of the paddy and said Sindh produced a bumper crop of the paddy this year, but after a span of many days the CM did not issue any directives to the Sindh Agricultural Department for setting up procurement centres and he did not hold any meeting with officials of the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supplies Corporation (PASSCO).
There were 800 rice mills in Sindh and Baluchistan. Qambar, Shahdadkot, Larkana, Ratedero, Nuadero, Dadu are famous for rice cultivation and people of the areas totally depend on their paddy crop and, but they urged the government to help them boost their produce.
Representatives of the agriculture sector lambasted the government instead of encouraging growers is promoting middle men and the government has been entertaining proposals submitted by the middle men instead of the farmers.
They need attention of the authorities, support price of their crop, subsidy on the agricultural input and output and they also require irrigation water. They said that pharmaceutical companies enhanced 40 to 50 per cent rates of the medicines but the government does not take any action, but it imposes all rules and regulations on growers and poor who are already undergoing penury and hunger. They appealed to the President and Prime Minster of the country to resolve their issues.
imtiaz_phulpoto@yahoo.com