Flood 12: Growers ask govt to provide Rs10b for rehabilitation

Seven of the worst-hit districts provided 62% of paddy crop in 2011.

HYDERABAD: Even after the last drop of stagnant water has been drained from flood-hit districts, crop growers will still have to face a residue of problems. Billions of rupees will be required to deal with the fact that ravenous downhill torrents from the Kirthar Range swallowed a sizeable chunk of their crops.

At a meeting organised on Friday at the Sindh Chamber of Agriculture, growers’ representatives said that the government should announce a rehabilitation package of at least Rs10 billion for farmers in flood-hit areas. They claimed that around 60 per cent of the crops sown over 712,000 acres in six of the worst-hit districts - Jacobabad, Kashmore, Kandhkot, Shikarpur, Ghotki, Sukkur and Qamber-Shahdadkot - had been destroyed during the downpour over two weeks ago. Rice and cotton are the two major kharif (autumn) crops grown in the districts. Though the agriculture department has yet to conduct an extensive survey of the affected areas, a preliminary report published by the agriculture extension department stated that around 11 per cent of the province’s kharif crops were destroyed.

“The paddy crop has been affected the most,” said the chamber’s vice president, Mir Murad Talpur, adding that about 80 per cent of the crop has been destroyed. He based his estimate on the fact the seeds for the crop were sown late and hadn’t grown much before the ravaging floodwater swept through the cultivated area. Of the 1.57 million acres of paddy sown across Sindh in 2011, 62 per cent came from the six affected districts mentioned earlier. This year, according to agriculture department, cotton was cultivated on 288,260 acres in the left bank districts of Ghotki and Sukkur. The irrigation department added that the four right bank districts were inundated by more than three million acre-feet of water.

The growers urged the government to expedite efforts to rehabilitate the agriculture sector has been incurring massive losses since 2010. Muhammad Khan Sarejo, a grower, said that there had been mismanagement and corruption in the distribution of free seeds and fertilizer following the super floods in the previous two years. He said that the affected farmers should be given a cash compensation of at least Rs5,000 per acre so that they can buy raw materials themselves. The other growers attending the meeting supported the demand.

The growers also demanded that action be taken against irrigation officials, alleging that they failed to manage the water supply properly. “Many areas connected with the branches of Jamrahu East and Jamrahu West canals which spring from Nara are not even receiving drinking water,” said another grower, Syed Muhammad Ali Shah.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2012.