A kisan convention held at TMA Hall,Mandi Bahauddin

Mandi Bahauddin(Sher Gondal) : A kisan convention was held Thursday here at TMA Hall to know critical areas where 100 billion Kisan package should be spent for promotion of Agriculture. Additional District Collector Afzaal Warraich presided over the convention. Besides farmers’ representatives, Commission Agents, Government department officials participated in the convention.

Farmers complained that Irrigation System in the district has almost collapsed. Shoulders of distributaries are broken, de-silting is not done regularly, Mogas sizes have been decreased, and Water flow in distributaries is lower to the authorized flow. As a result tales and some distributaries have turned dry.

Rajbahs passing through Mandi city are choked with refuse and plastic bags and irrigation staff have turned blind eye to it. They said water is backbone of agriculture and without it per acre yield cannot be increased. They requested that maximum portion of the package be used for improving irrigation system. Farmers said their second priority is improvement and increase of veterinary service for treatment and protection of live stock against diseases specially foot and mouth diseases.

They said government should construct boundary wall around veterinary dispensaries, arrange water and electricity and complete staff deficiency for their proper functioning. Adequate medicines should be made available to treat sick cattle. Cattle Crash should be installed in each dispensary. They said it is their bad luck that fertilizers and pesticides prices are not controlled by government and traders overcharge and resort to black-marketing.

On the other side when the crops are harvested government lowers price of agriculture produce and when the produce like wheat and paddy is sold and stocked in storages of hoarders the price is increased. This practice is nothing except exploiting farmers. They demanded balance should be maintained in agriculture input and output to allow them to live. They also demanded increase in price of milk as breeding of cattle in view of increase price of Wands, Khal and banola.

Speaking on the occasion ADC Afzaal Warraich said Punjab Government was well aware of farmers’ problems and under directions of CM Punjab it was working to make farmers prosperous. In this respect he said several measures were taken to provide financial assistance to farmers as compensation. He said now on assessment of farmers suggestions a strategy would be formed and the 100 billion packages would be used on those critical areas indicated by them. This measure would not only increase per acre yield but also make farmers happy.