HYDERABAD, Oct 7: The Sindh Abadgar Board on Sunday demanded inquiry by a high court judge into the causes that led to breach in Rohri Canal, which has devastated vast areas and rendered more than 2,000 people homeless, and award exemplary punishment to the irrigation officials responsible for the disaster.

The board which met here regretted that crops on thousands of acres had been destroyed either due to floods, shortage of water or inefficiency of government functionaries.

The meeting expressed surprise at the occurrence of breach especially at a time when the canal had only 50 per cent of its total capacity and reached the unanimous opinion that the disaster had occurred due to inefficiency of irrigation department.

The department had imposed rotation programme on the Rohri Canal system before the breach, which had also led to destruction of crops but the breach had proved the proverbial last straw, the meeting said.

The meeting said that a whole month had passed since the canal developed breach but many areas fed by the canal were still waiting for water to reach them.

They badly needed water for sowing fresh sugarcane crop and watering the old one after sugar mills had delayed the crushing season, the meeting said adding that the irrigation water was also required for onion and cotton crops.

The meeting demanded that the department should ensure the tail-end growers received water without further delay and pointed out that main Kharif crops, cotton and rice, had already been dealt a serious blow forcing farming community to depend heavily on the sugarcane crop.

The meeting said that the cane growers this year had produced bumper crop estimated to be at least 20 per cent more than the last year’s. Therefore, the sugar mills should be directed to start crushing immediately after Eidul Fitr, it said.

Quoting PSMA report, the meeting observed that whenever sugar mills the sugar mills had started crushing in October, the mills had more sucrose recovery and considerable increase in production of sugar.

The statistics had proved that the sugar mills in Sindh produced more sugar than the mills of Punjab per maund and sugar mills in Sindh earned Rs8 per maund more on 40 kg of sugarcane than the sugar mills in Punjab.

The meeting stressed that all the canons of justice required that the price of sugarcane in Sindh should also be Rs8 per maund more than the price fixed for Punjab crop.

The meeting expressed grave concern over acute shortage of wheat seed, and complained that the seed producing companies had increased manifold the seed’s price.

This would certainly lead to growers cultivating less wheat, the meeting said and added that minimum price of wheat should be fixed at Rs500 per 40 kg to encourage wheat growers and reminded the government that wheat was being sold for Rs650 per 40 kg in the international market.

SCA: The senior vice-president of the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur, said on Sunday that the breach in Rohri Canal had dropped water level in Naseer irrigation division pushing the crops of banana, onion, chilli and cotton valued at tens of millions of rupees.

He said at a meeting of the chamber that the irrigation department should ensure water was released to the tail-end and abolish rotation programme immediately.

He urged the government to announce an agricultural package for the growers whose lands hand been destroyed by the breach in the canal to enable them to grow Rabi crops.

The meeting regretted that till date no compensation had been paid to the growers of Thatta, Badin and other southern parts of the province, which had been severely hit by heavy rains, floods and overflow of Sim Nullahs. The meeting demanded that the growers of affected areas should be exempted from payment of agricultural loans and the decision to auction their lands should be withdrawn.

The meeting demanded that the cotton ginning charges of Rs325 per three maunds of cotton should be reduced to Rs250 and regretted that the government had not even paid the growers of Shahdadkot, Qambar and Qubbo Saeed Khan.