The President of Sindh Abadgar Board (SAB) Abdul Majeed Nizamani appealed to the Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to save the sunflower crop in southern districts of Sindh province by ensuring water supply during the month of January and February 2005 in Kotri Barrage channels. In his representation he pointed out that due to poor water availability, it had adversely affected the rice and sugarcane production, which has created a no cane situation for several sugarcane crushing units.
The autumn sowing in most of the area had been abandoned due to water shortage and the growers have been shifted to low water consuming crop - Sunflower on a large scale to minimise the import of edible oil. There are apprehensions that acute shortage of water supply in these districts might adversely affect per acre yield. It was for this reason the growers decided to approach you with a request to personally intervene to ensure two water supplies during the month of January and February 2005 so the people could get proper output and water for drinking purposes.
He said that during the current year, rates of sunflower is abnormally low and if proper steps were not taken to regulate the price structure the ideas of making country self-sufficient in edible oil would remain a distant dream. He said at a time when sunflower is cultivated on hundreds of thousand acres of land as winter crop, it appear that the cartel of edible oil importers is out to thwart the efforts of the growers to brought a change in cropping pattern to minimise the impact of water shortage.
He suggested that besides ensuring two water supply the Association of Solvent Plants should also be directed to announce purchasing price forthwith.
It also suggested imposing additional import duty on palm oil to prevent dumping.
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