Fertiliser hoarding: 130 urea bags recovered, sold

Farmers fear paddy yield will go down due to artificial shortage.

PASRUR/SIALKOT:

A hundred and thirty bags of urea fertiliser were recovered from secret warehouses and sold to paddy farmers on the instructions of Pasrur Assistant Commissioner Samia Saleem on Wednesday.

Each bag was sold at Rs1,390. The price notified by the government however is Rs1,250.

Police registered a case against fertiliser dealer Haji Muhammad Yaqub on charges of hoarding.

The raid was carried out by Saleem and a team of district officials at a ware house near Khoi Stop on Daska-Pasrur Road.

Farmers have been complaining of the shortage of fertiliser in Sialkot district. They have raised concerns that the yield of paddy crop in the region could go down this season due to the ‘artificial’ shortage. They say so far they have used a little less than three fourths the fertiliser needed. They say most dealers are selling DAP at Rs1,600 to Rs1,700 per bag. The rate set by the government by comparison is Rs1,245 per bag. Paddy growers Syed Iqbal Shah, Nasir Iqbal, Chaudhry Allah Bakhsh, Ghulam Hussain, Bashir Ahmed, Chaudhry Muhammad Akbar, Bilal Hassan and Khalid Mehmood blame the district administration for the shortage. They say the administration is too busy with Ramazan Bazaars and is ignoring other duties altogether.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 18^th, 2011.