HYDERABAD, Nov 4: A survey of watercourses in each Deh of the district is starting on Friday with a view to helping farmers to form associations to carry out the lining wok.
This was decided at a meeting of a three-member committee, comprising EDO revenue Aftab Memon, EDO agriculture Shuhabuddin Siddiqui and EDO Community Developement Ibrahim Qureshi and officials of water management, revenue and social welfare department on Thursday.
The committee set up by the district government to speed up the implementation of the national programme for watercourses improvement.
EDO agriculture Shuhabuddin Siddiqui said as many as 2,930 watercourses would be lined during four years, and the lining of 254 watercourses would be completed by the end of this year.
He said the government under the national programme for improvement of watercourses had extended facilities and granted incentives to growers under which the full cost of construction, except labour charges, would be borne by the government.
He said water-users associations would be registered with the community development department and added DDOs of social welfare depart that ment and officers of the revenue department had been assigned to motivate and guide the growers for getting their water-users associations registered and watercourses lined.
He said that by lining the watercourses, 40 per cent of water would be saved for further cultivation.
He said that farmers were unaware of the immense advantages of the programme and said that out of 254 expected applications, his office had received only 86 applications till date.
He stressed the need for motivating the farmers in this regard.
EDO revenue Aftab Memon directed the officials to get the project implemented on a war footing and termed it as a national cause keeping in view the acute shortage of water.
EDO CDD Ibrahim Qureshi directed DDOs of the social welfare department for preparing strategies to register water-users associations.
DDOs of water management, social welfare department and Mukhtiarkars of all the talukas attended the meeting.
SAB: The Sindh Abadgar Board has appealed to President Gen Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Minister for Privatisation Dr Hafeez Shaikh to reconsider the decision to privatize the Pak-Arab Fertilizers.
In a communication, the board's president, Mr Majeed Nizamani, said the farming community had been supporting the government policy of de-regularization and privatization but there were certain areas where privatization prove counterproductive.
Mr Nizamani said as far as the Pak-Arab Fertilizer was concerned, there was no strong regulatory framework in place to safeguard the interests of the growers.
He feared that the large producers would form a cartel as had been done in the cement industry and manipulate the price of fertilizer at the cost of poor farmers.
He said the experience had shown that on the one hand fertilizer industry earned huge profits but on the other the advantage was never passed on to the farmers.
Mr Nizamani claimed that the Pak-Arab Fertilizer was running in profit and the government was in a position to sustain this project in the larger interest of the agriculture sector.
He said that it was internationally acknowledged that in a developed market the government continues to provide service in selected fields. Mr Nizamani expressed hope that the proposal to privatize the Pak-Arab Fertilizer would be reconsidered in the larger interests of the country.
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