HYDERABAD, Aug 26: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) on Sunday urged the government to fix support price of wheat at Rs550 per 40 kilogramme, sugarcane at Rs75 per 40 kg, Sindhi Basmati rice at Rs550 per 40 kg and Irri rice at Rs400 per 40 kg following phenomenal increase in the production cost of the crops.

Mr Shah said the government should direct the sugar mills to start crushing season from Oct 15 and welcomed its decision to raise production value of an agricultural unit from Rs400 to Rs1,200.

He advised the government to adopt biological methods to destroy mealy-bug, which had become resistant to all kinds of sprays and pesticides. The bug’s sudden attack was destroying cotton crops in Sindh, he said.

The meeting requested the government to transfer the office of the horticulture board from Karachi to Hyderabad as it was useless for the growers of Sindh.

The meeting demanded that the government should set up a dehydration plant and a dry port in Khairpur to facilitate date growers and urged it to ensure implementation of its own orders for providing fertilisers at subsidised rates.

Citizen Community Boards: DC-O Aftab Ahmed Khatri has expressed concern over the performance of the community welfare organisations and development oriented NGOs in the district for lukewarm response to the participatory development programme launched by the present government by involving the Citizen Community Boards (CCB) in the development process.

This he said while presiding over a meeting about the budgetary allocations for CCB projects here on Saturday.

He said that the government has introduced CCB for development and improvement in service deliveries to the people through voluntary and self-help initiatives.

He said, each board has a chairman, secretary, executive committee of seven members and a general body comprising 25 members but unfortunately the NGOs and CBOs have not shown any interest as compared with allocations of funds by the government for the development work under participatory development programme.

He said that the district government Hyderabad was providing 80 per cent cost of the proposed schemes under CCB development programme while remaining 20 per cent amount of the scheme was supposed to be shared by CCB concerned.

He said that at present the district government has an amount of Rs111.26 million in balance to finance the development schemes proposed by the registered CCBs.

He said that four different CCB development schemes have been completed by utilising an amount of Rs10.26 million while 52 other CCB organisations have been registered by the Community Development Department (CDD).

He said that two new CCB schemes one each for constructing boundary wall for the graveyard of Latifabad and additional class-rooms for computer literacy centre Tandojam have been recently approval by zila council Hyderabad which would be implemented soon. Besides, seven different feasibility reports of development schemes submitted by the CCBs were being evaluated and examined.

The DCO directed the officers concerned to create awareness among the public and social welfare organisations through workshops and seminars and even hire the services of the consultants to accelerate the participatory development activities under the CCB programme and to ensure that funds available under this programme are fully utilised.

ACTION PLAN: DCO Hyderabad Aftab Ahmed Khatri presiding over a meeting regarding General Reform Action Plan (GRAP), directed the management of CDD to prepare a feasibility report for providing facilities to the women vocational institutions run under its administration.

He said that these centres were the source of livelihood especially for poor women and these must be strengthened for having more capacity of training and production.

Mr Khatri also directed that a separate feasibility report for the establishment of day-care centre for minor children of working women should also be prepared for each taluka of the district.