The session started about 45 minutes later than its scheduled time of 9 am. Human Rights and Finance Minister Kamran Michael answered questions regarding the Communication and Works Department, which has also been assigned to him.
PPP deputy leader in the PA Shaukat Mehmood Basra moved a resolution in support of democratic set up in the country that was adopted without debate.
Law Minister Rana Sanaullah Khan informed the Speaker, Rana Muhammad Iqbal Khan, that he had told Basra and PPP Parliamentary Leader Maj (retd) Zulfiqar Gondal that treasury bench would only support the motion if its contents were not debated in the house.
The house then unanimously passed the resolution without any debate. The resolution stated that all political parties in the PA favour the continuity and stability of democracy.
Agriculture Minister Ahmad Ali Aulakh said the Punjab government had asked the federal government in July 2011 to provide it with 3.3 million tons of fertiliser. He said 2.6 million tons out of this amount had been expected to be produced within the country while 0.7 million tons was to be imported. He said over the last six months the federal government had imported 0.483 million tons fertiliser through the Gawadar Port. The minister said that so far only 168,000 tons had been received in the Punjab. He blamed the federal government for the scarcity of 175,000 tons of fertiliser faced by the province for the past two months.
Minister Aulakh said the federal government had fixed the price of a bag of urea at Rs1,300 but the bags were being sold at Rs1,900 each.
PML Unification Bloc MPA Sheikh Alauddin alleged the National Fertiliser Marketing Limited which is responsible for fertiliser distribution had allocated 10,000 bags of urea to their agent for a commission of Rs200 per bag.
PPP MPA Maj (retd) Abdul Rehman said the price of sugar cane at Rs150 per 40 kilogrammes (kg) had been fixed when the price of a fertiliser bag was Rs870. Most growers, however, he said, had purchased the fertiliser bags at Rs2,200 per bag.
Rehman said sugar mills owners had not paid growers for the past three years. Only Cane Procurement Receipts (CPR) had been handed to growers, he said, adding that these could not be used for legal action.
Sanaullah said Rs1.31 billion had been disbursed to the growers over the last year. He said 20 mills had paid Rs860.93 million and two mills which had been reluctant to the pay the farmers had been sealed.
He said this year sugar cane had been cultivated over 1.8 million acres of land and 2.7 million metric tons sugar was expected to be produced. He said the sugar cane commissioner had ensured that growers were getting 65 to 70 per cent price of sugar canes from the mills.
He said the actual problem the growers faced was production of banned types of sugar cane, illegal deduction and rigged weight bridges. He said the Punjab government had directed all DCOs to form committees including local MPAs to remove such problems.
PML-Q leader Chaudhry Zaheeruddin said growers also faced price pressure in the market. He said the Punjab government had made the Agriculture Market Committee dysfunctional and instead appointed administrators which was the major reason why the price of sugar cane had not been specified.
Speaker adjourned the session till Monday at 3 pm and said that discussion would be continued.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2011.
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