Kissan Board: ‘Retrieve govt land from grabbers’

LAHORE:

The Kissan Board Pakistan (KBP) on Wednesday demanded that the government retrieve the land belonging to the Auqaf Department, Irrigation and Power Department, Wapda and Railways from the land grabbers. Malik Muhammad Ramazan Rohri, the KBP central general secretary, and Haji Muhammad Ramazan, the information secretary, were talking to a delegation of farmers from the areas affected by last year’s historic floods. Rohri said that hundreds of thousands of acres of land at 14 headworks had been merged with pond areas and abandoned. He warned that this risked destruction of flood protection works. He said that hundreds of thousands of acres of land in pond areas had been occupied by the influential land lords in connivance with certain irrigation officers. He said these people were regularly sowing crops on this land.  “The same Irrigation officials will try to stop water from going into the pond area to save these crops. This will cause great damage to the lands of the poor farmers downstream.” The KBP secretary urged the government to take action against the land grabbers.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 4^th, 2011.