CHAKWAL, Sept 6: If one has to witness the worst form of bad governance one may visit the backyard of Agriculture Department of Chakwal where agricultural implements worth Rs20 million have been rusting in the open since 2007.

The pathetic site stands as a testimony to bureaucracy’s indifference to the public property.

More than 300 agricultural tools including cultivators, front-blades, disk-ploughs, chisel-ploughs, rabi-drills, peanut-drills, wheat straw choppers, fertilizer-separators and 68 tractors were purchased by former district Nazim Sardar Ghulam Abbas for Rs60 million in 2007.

Apparently, the step was taken to assist the poor farmers of the district by providing a tractor fitted with these implements to each union council but the move was termed ill-conceived and unfeasible by the agriculture experts, hence the farmers could not benefit from this move.

The then district administration could not arrange drivers for these tractors and all the 68 tractors kept on rusting until 2010 when the Punjab government shifted all of them to the flood-hit areas to be used in rescue activities there.

But the agricultural implements are still lying there and most of them have sunk in the thick weeds.

“It was an unfeasible scheme conceived by former district Nazim costing millions to the public exchequer,” a senior official at agriculture office told on request of anonymity.

Pinpointing the two major loopholes in the scheme, he said: “Firstly, one tractor is not even enough for a village how it could have catered to the whole union council. Secondly, for each tractor at least two drivers were required, which district government failed to recruit.”

He said that the district government should have sold all the tractors and implements to the farmers at reasonable prices.

A source said that the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif had already ordered to give the tractors and implements to the Agriculture Research Institutes and the rest should be distributed among the farmers but his orders were not being implemented due to red-tape.

When contacted, District Officer Agriculture (technical) Dr Mohammad Khalid said that many letters had been written to the higher authorities seeking their advice to dispose of the implements in a proper way but no response had been received.

Talking to Dawn, former district Nazim Sardar Ghulam Abbas said that he took the step for the welfare of the poor farmers of the district but unfortunately the present government did not take interest to utilise the implements according to the scheme.

“Being a farmer, I am fully aware that without the use of modern technology, we could not get bumper crops and I introduced modern technology for the farmers of Chakwal,” he maintained.

On the other hand, the farmers of the district have appealed to the chief minister that the tractors and implements should be given to them.

They are of the view that all the tractors which were sent to the flood-hit areas are the property of Chakwal district and should be given back to the district.