Sugarcane rate fixed at Rs200/maund

LAHORE:Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar Friday chaired a meeting at the Chief Minister’s Office to fix the minimum price of sugarcane and review start of the crushing season.

The meeting decided to fix the minimum price of sugarcane at Rs200 per maund. The meeting also gave approval in principle to start crushing season in southern Punjab districts from Nov 10 and from Nov 15 in rest of the districts.

The CM said that like the previous year, rights of sugarcane growers would be protected this year too and no one would be allowed to exploit the cultivators. Sugarcane farmers would be paid full reward of their hard work, he added.

The previous government exploited farmers by not increasing the price of sugarcane in their tenure, he said and added that Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government was a farmer-friendly government in the true sense.

The chief secretary and other officers concerned were also present in the meeting.Opp directionless: Usman Buzdar has asserted that the opposition is directionless and lacks political acumen.

In a statement, the chief minister regretted that the opposition had no agenda and made it clear the government was not bothered over public meetings. These elements, in fact, want to protect their corruption in the garb of rallies but the accountability of the corrupt will continue under PM Imran Khan because PTI is mandated to eliminate corruption and it will not deviate from it, he added.

The chief minister said the people had already rejected the politics of chaos and they would not side with such elements.

Meanwhile, the PTI government is fully engaged in public service and the journey of public service will continue, Usman Buzdar said. The chief minister warned that there was a threat of the second wave of corona and the political agitators should avoid playing with the lives of the people because the virus can spread due to corona SOPs violation.

COVID-19 situation: Usman Buzdar has said that corona is a national issue and unfortunately opposition is trying to politicise the situation. He said number of active cases of corona has reached 2016 in the province. During the last 24 hours, 130 corona cases have been reported and two patients died; 2,283 patients have died in the province as yet. During the last 24 hours, 11,672 tests were conducted and 1,419,284 tests have been conducted in the province so far while 97,002 patients out of 101,301 have recovered.

The chief minister said that continuous implementation of the preventive measures was in people’s interest. Citizens should maintain social distancing to protect their lives. The threat of spreading COVID-19 cannot be ignored through public gathering. He said that opposition parties were playing with the life of people only for their personal motive.