Deliberate holdout?: Officials keep growers deprived of water

The meeting demanded implementation of over Rs400 subsidy on a DAP fertilizer bag.

HYDERABAD: The Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) has asked the provincial government to take action against the irrigation officials for failing to supply irrigation water despite there being an abundant flow in the river. The growers complained that all the three barrages in the province have recorded high flows but the irrigation officials have kept the tail-end growers deprived of water. The issue was raised at the SCA’s weekly meeting, which was chaired by its president Dr Syed Nadeem Qamar. The growers representatives from over a dozen districts attended the meeting through video conference facility arranged in Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur and Sanghar. The meeting also demanded implementation of over Rs400 subsidy on a DAP fertilizer bag announced in the provincial budget 2014-15. They claimed that the fertilizer dealers around the province were still selling the DAP bags without deduction of the subsidised amount.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 14^th, 2014.