HYDERABAD, Jan 25: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture on Sunday urged the federal government to drop the proposal for levying income tax on agriculture because, it said, the growers were already paying agricultural tax.

The chamber, which met here under its senior-vice president, Mir Murad Ali Khan Talpur, argued that the growers were already paying agricultural tax to Sindh government at the rate of Rs200 per acre as well as agricultural income tax.

If the federal government also levied federal income tax it would be double taxation and a flagrant violation of the Constitution, the meeting observed.

The chamber’s general secretary, Akhund Ghulam Mohammad Siddiqui, said that the growers who faced huge problems due to acute shortage of irrigation water and fertiliser would be ruined completely if a new tax was imposed on them.

The meeting criticised delay in payment of dues to cane growers, which amounted to tens of millions of rupees, and demanded that the government direct the mills to clear dues.

The meeting demanded that the minimum support price of sugarcane should be fixed at Rs125 per 40 kilogram and suggested that if it was not possible then the price of sugar should be reduced to Rs30 per kg.

The meeting said that the recent rains had destroyed paddy crop in Shikarpur, Larkana, Qambar-Shahdadkot and other rice-growing districts and demanded that they be declared as calamity-hit.

The meeting called for carrying out de-silting of all water channels including Naseer and Jamrao canals to ensure water supply to tail-end growers.

SECY AGRICULTURE: Agriculture Secretary Sabhago Khan Jatoi said on Sunday that he expected bumper wheat crop in Sindh and assured that employees of the Agriculture Research Institute would be regularised and the children of retired employees would be given employment in the department.

He said after meeting a delegation of the employees during a surprise visit to the institute on Saturday that he felt regret that the services of employees who had been working for 20 to 25 years had not been regularised.

He said that the employees of the institute who were working in Quaid-i-Awam Agriculture Research Centre, Larkana would be given corporation allowance and the employees’ residential colonies would be repaired.