SUKKUR: Hundreds of growers staged a demonstration outside the office of Thull assistant commissioner in Jacobabad district on Monday in protest against government’s failure to provide them gunny bags.

The protesters blocked Thull–Jacobabad road by burning tyres and holding a sit-in.

Ghulam Hyder Sarki, Ishaq Khoso and Ghulam Ahmad Banglani who led the protest complained to journalists that the target for Thull was 60,000 gunny bags out of which a high official of the Jacobabad district administration and food inspector Chitho Jakhrani handed over to influential people about 50,000 including the 18,000 bags a local influential person, Liaqat Sarki, forcibly snatched away from staff after attacking the procurement centre.

They said that not a single gunny bag had been given to small growers. There were only 5,000 bags left in the procurement centre which were not being given to anyone.

They said that food inspector Chitho Jakhrani was arrested and put behind lockup just for a day and was later released at the pretext that the allegations against him would be probed by a committee and action would be taken in light of its report.

The protesters demanded the minister for food should conduct an impartial inquiry against the officials involved in misappropriation of gunny bags, take stern action against them and provide gunny bags to small growers and peasants.

Govt cannot lift entire wheat crop: minister

Sindh Minister for Food Syed Nasir Hussain Shah has said the Sindh government cannot purchase all the six million tonnes of wheat the province has produced this year since it cannot keep that much grain in godowns.

The government had provided 11 million gunny bags to procurement centres for the purchase of 1.1 million tonnes target, therefore, there would naturally be complaints from growers, said the minister while talking to journalists at the Jacobabad Deputy Commissioner office on Sunday.

For such pumper production, the government would need at least 60 million gunny bags which it could not bear and it was quite difficult to provide gunny bags to all growers, he said.

He warned political and influential persons, who were forcibly taking away gunny bags from procurement centres, of legal action and said cases would lodged against them and they would be sent to jail.

He said that action had been taken against officials of the food department, including district food controllers and food inspectors, who were found involved in misappropriation.

If the officials were found guilty of corruption they would not be spared because the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari as well as Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah had issued directives to distribute gunny bags in a fair and transparent manner.

Mr Shah said that price of rice and wheat in international market had dropped but the government fixed support price of wheat at Rs1,300 per 40 kgs only to benefit growers.

If the government had not fixed support price the traders might not have purchased wheat at Rs1,100 to Rs1,200 per 40 kgs and would have offered only Rs600 to Rs700 per 40 kgs, inflicting unbearable losses on growers, he said.

He said that he was still new to mechanism of food department and had formulated policies in consultation with experts to address growers’ complaints from next year. He said the government was in talks with the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) and it had promised to lift 100,000 tonnes of wheat.

The PASSCO’s target for purchase of wheat was 1.8 million tonnes and Sindh’s share came to about two and a half to 400,000 tonnes, he said.

About the current political situation, the minister said the prime minister had gone broad for medical treatment and anybody could inquire after health of an ill person. If Asif Ali Zardari visited him to inquire after his health nobody should have any objection to it, he said.

He rubbished reports of any political change in Sindh and said there could, however, be changes in the cabinet.

Jacobabad Deputy Commissio­ner Agha Shah Nawaz Babbar, Mir Farooq Khan Jakhrani also accompanied the minister.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2016