Due share: PUT hails resolution calling for tobacco’s crop status

Claims move will bring ‘radical change’ in lives of poor farmers.

PESHAWAR:

Pakhtunkhwa Ulasi Tehrik (PUT) has lauded Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly’s resolution to grant crop status to tobacco and asking the centre to give the province its due share in the support fund received from the international community in the name of militancy.

The resolution was tabled in the K-P Assembly by Awami National Party (ANP) lawmaker Sardar Hussain Babak and Awami Jamhoori Ittehad Pakistan (AJIP) MPA Babar Saleem and was subsequently passed during the ongoing session.

“The province is war-torn and the resolution will help secure its rights,” said PUT Chairman Dr Said Alam Mehsud in a press statement. “Since 2002, the government of Pakistan has secured billions from the international community for the destruction caused by militancy in K-P and the tribal belt,” he mentioned.



Mehsud added that besides financial assistance, the federal government received trade concessions worth billions, but did not devolve any of the benefits to the deserving areas.

He said that it is a fundamental right of the people of K-P to ask for their share. He added the federal government earns Rs40 billion from the tobacco crop every year but only Rs6 billion falls into the hands of poor farmers.

“The resolution will bring about a radical change in the lives of poor farmers of the province,” Mehsud claimed.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2014.