HYDERABAD, Oct 21: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) on Sunday rejected the government’s support price for sugarcane and threatened to launch a province-wide movement if it did not raise the price to Rs70 per 40 kilogramme. The chamber in a meeting chaired by Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah urged the Sindh government to make the mills operational and rejected Rs67 per 40 kg support price announced on Saturday.Mr Shah said that the government had failed to enforce its price last year and was likely to fail during the current season as well. The government had no option but to increase the crop’s minimum price as demanded by the chamber, he said. He rejected the government decision to make sugar mills in Sindh and Punjab operational at the same time, arguing that the crop in Sindh matured a month earlier than that in Punjab. It was, therefore, essential to start the crushing season in Sindh a month earlier, he stressed.Mr Shah pointed out that the government had raised the price of one productive index unit from Rs400 to Rs1,200 and had also issued a covering notification in this regard but almost all the commercial banks were violating it much to the anger of growers.

He urged the government to enforce its writ and warned that if the commercial banks continued to violate the notification the growers could file criminal cases against bank authorities. The State Bank of Pakistan should take strict action against the managers who were violating the government instructions, he said.The meeting urged the government to provide good quality wheat seed to the growers and ensure availability of fertilisers in the market at subsidised rates. The meeting offered fateha for the people who lost their lives in Karachi blasts on Oct 18 and demanded that their heirs should be paid Rs500,000 each and the injured Rs50,000 each compensation.

The meeting demanded that the terrorists who had committed this heinous crime should be unearthed and awarded exemplary punishment. Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui, Anwar Bachani, Mir Imdad Talpur and Aijaz Nabi Shah were among those who attended the meeting.