HYDERABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News – 9th Sep, 2018 ) :The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA), a farmers’ lobbying group, has urged the Sindh government to declare drought in whole province excluding Karachi.
The demand was raised after a meeting of SCA at its secretariat here Sunday in view of the irrigation water shortage in the province which persisted for 6 months in the current year.
The meeting was presided by SCA’s President Qabool Muhammad Khatian while the farmers’ representatives from Karachi, Sukkur, Sanghar and Ghotki attended through the video link.The farmers said around 80 percent of some 12.7 million acres of land under command area of the Guddu, Sukkur and Kotri barrages in Sindh had been affected by the water shortage.
"The crops on 9 million acres dried owing to the water scarcity," said Khatian.The meeting demanded that all the irrigation and agricultural taxes should be waived for the farmers and that the State Bank should waive the agricultural loan.
The farmers also expressed concern over shortage of water in the irrigation canals and requested the Sindh government to stop releasing 20,000 cusecs water in the downstream of Kotri barrage.
They asked the government to ensure that the sugar mills started sugarcane crushing from first week of November.
250 per maund support price for the sugarcane crop against Rs.
172 per maund which was given last year.
"The meeting of Sugarcane Development Board should be called at the earliest to fix the price," the SCA demanded.
The SCA’s meeting decried the ever increasing prices of electricity, gas and fertilizer and asked the federal government to honour its promises for the farmers and agricultural growth.