President of Mango Growers Association of Pakistan (MGAP) and former Chairman Board of Management Agro Food Processing Facility (AFP) Multan Syed Zahid Hussain Gardezi has said the board of management of AFP was neither dissolved nor held responsible for poor performance and was nominated after completion of three-year term.
He termed speculations, regarding dissolution of board of management on grounds of under performance, as baseless and fabricated, and circulated with vested interests. The facility was rather fully functional and successfully processing mango pulp, he said.
He said it is the prerogative of Ministry of Industries & Production and Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (Smeda) under PC-I to nominate a new board of management after the expiry of the previous one. He, however, said that functioning of AFP is dependent on seasonal fruits and could remain shutdown when no fruits are available for pulping.
The facility was inaugurated by Prime Minister of Pakistan Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani at the end of mango season 2009 and despite facing technical difficulties with the processing line supplied by Bertuzzi, Italy, processing of mango commenced while engineers were working on it. He said that AFP began to show its presence in the entire mango belt around Multan. It is receiving 60-70 tons of mangoes daily and had so far processed 300 metric tons of mango pulp.
The facility has received orders for processing of over 1500 tons of pulp much before the appointment of new board of management which, Gardezi said, is a huge success by any standard for first year of production. These achievements were made despite unscrupulous propaganda by non-stakeholders that had ulterior motives, depicting AFP as a failed project right from its inception. He termed establishment of AFP in the mango city of Pakistan, from scratch to a towering common facility centre for fruit growers, a proud achievement of the Mango Growers Association of Pakistan.
He vowed that the association would continue to monitor this common facility centre and guide new board to achieve the objectives of establishing mango pulp plant in letter and spirit. He said that it now is a challenge for the newly composed board of management to sustain and carry the Standard Operational Procedures meticulously formulated by the outgoing BoM, and adhere to the vision of the project of making growers only beneficiaries of the project.
He said the MGAP would stand by the new management to ensure that growers are facilitated without any role of middleman, traders or businessmen. He however urged the businessmen and investors of the country to establish more mango pulp plants in the wake of spread of mango region in Rahimyar Khan and Sindh, taking lead from AFP-Multan.
President MGAP said the association would continue efforts to highlight problems of mango growers as a selfless service provider and take pride in the exemplary attention being given to mango processing. He said he would strive to put Multan on world map as the mango city of Pakistan.
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