HYDERABAD, Nov 26: The president of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Syed Qamaruzzaman Shah, has appealed to farmers to identify dealers who are indulging in black marketing of fertiliser.

He said that would enable the chamber to move the authorities to take legal action against the unscrupulous people.

Speaking at a meeting of the chamber held here on Sunday, he said that the entire infrastructure in interior Sindh had been destroyed due to recent heavy rains and roads and pathways had become unusable.

He said that under the circumstances, the growers were unable to transport their agricultural commodities to markets.

He said that accidents had become common due to the decrepit condition of roads and many a precious life had been lost in road accidents.

He regretted that work on repairs and construction of roads was proceeding at a snail’s pace.

The chamber president said that even the Super Highway and the National Highway had been damaged.

He said that a chamber's delegation would attend “road safety” seminar being convened in Karachi on Monday by the Sindh Education Foundation to highlight the problems which have arisen due to the destruction of infrastructure making road travel unsafe for people.

The meeting demanded that the government should take effective measures to check black marketing of fertilisers and to accelerate the pace of work on the rehabilitation of roads.

Mir Murad Ali Talpur, Aijaz Nabi Shah, Misri Khan Mallah and Anwar Bachani attended the meeting.

SINDH CHIEF SECRETRY: Farmers have been advised to send complaints about black marketing, profiteering and hoarding of fertilisers, particularly DAP, to district coordination officers of their districts, who will take strict action against culprits under the Profiteering and Hoarding Act.

This was decided at a meeting in Karachi on Saturday.

The meeting discussed the problem of artificial shortage of fertilisers. The Sindh chief secretary presided over the meeting.

A spokesman for the directorate of the Sindh agriculture information in a statement issued here on Sunday, said that the federal government had already announced a subsidy of Rs250 per bag of DAP (diammonium phosphate), SOP (potassium sulphate), MOP (potassium chloride) and TSP (triple super phosphate) fertilisers, Rs125 per bag of NP (nitrophos) and Rs257 per bag of MAP (mono-ammonium phosphate) fertiliser to encourage balanced use of fertilisers and increase agriculture productivity.

The meeting expressed concern that unscrupulous dealers and traders were not passing on the benefit of subsidised fertilisers to growers and were involved in black marketing and hoarding, who should be strictly dealt with.

It was decided that the dealers and shop owners of fertilisers would display price list as per subsidised rates.

The business activities of the dealers will be monitored and severe action will be taken against those who were found charging higher prices and hoarding the stocks.

NAZIM: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil inaugurated a primary school in Citizen Colony of Qasimabad constructed at a cost of Rs3.3 million of which the district government had provided Rs2 million.

Addressing the inauguration ceremony the nazim said that the school’s construction started in 1993 but soon afterwards the contractors stopped work and the project was subsequently dropped from the ADP. The district government resumed its construction and completed it thin a short period of six months, he said.

Eleven primary schools were under construction in Qasimabad taluka and 13 additional rooms had been added to the existing schools, he said, adding that a Girls High School was also being built at a cost of Rs7.8 million and an auditorium was being built at the Government Girls’ Degree College.