Sindh growers’ body demands probe into DPP’s affairs

The Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) has appealed to the prime minister to urgently look into the affairs of the Department of Plant Protection (DPP) under the Ministry of National Food Security & Research of his government before it is too late, saying that the way the department currently discharges its obligations could cause irreparable damage to agriculture and public health in the country.

In a press statement issued here on Sunday, SAB President Abdul Majeed Nizamani said that all the evidence of the recent past had undeniably suggested that the DPP had been involved in the acts that it was meant to prevent by virtue of its charter.

Nizamani said the DPP had failed miserably in checking and preventing imports of such agricultural and edible commodities to Pakistan which proved seriously harmful both to crops and public health.

He said the prime minister had the agenda of weeding out corruption from the country and the DPP should be on the top of his list of departments where such practices had to be overcome to protect the health of the citizens and to ensure survival of the agro-economy of the country.

He said that there were recent instances where the import consignments brought to port in Karachi contained defective and infected soybeans of such low quality that they should not be given permission to move into Pakistan for edible oil production.

He said the per-acre yield of crops in the province had been phenomenally decreasing as the agricultural tracts were getting polluted due to unchecked transportation of such consignments from one part of the country to another.