Federal Food, Agriculture and Livestock Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan on Saturday said the government was according high priority to agriculture research and development to meet the challenges of food security, poverty reduction, improved quality of life for rural masses and export competitiveness in the global markets.
He stated this while presiding over the 26th meeting of the Board of Governors of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (Parc) here.
Minfal Secretary Ismail Qureshi, Parc Chairman Dr M.E. Tusneem, Planning Commission Member Dr Kausar Abdullah Malik, Faisalabad, Tandojam, Peshawar, and Quetta agricultural universities vice-chancellors, progressive farmers, and Parc management team members attended the Board meeting.
The Parc chief made a presentation on the Council's future strategic plan, its research agenda, and various reform initiatives to achieve the targets.
The meeting dwelt at length on the budgetary requirements of Parc, its proposed silver jubilee celebration in December 2006 and the scientific human resource development in agriculture.
The Board gave invaluable suggestions to strengthen the national agriculture research system and also unanimously approved the Parc annual budget for fiscal year 2006-07.
Sikandar Bosan said: "We must help provide the necessary incentive structure for the agricultural scientists to exploit their creative potential to the well-being of our people in order to achieve these objectives."
"Agriculture scientists are our most important assets. They have a daunting task ahead to help Pakistan meet the challenges of food security, poverty reduction, improved quality of life for rural people, and export competitiveness in the global markets", the minister added.
He said the Medium-Term Development Framework (MTDF) for 2005-10 sets out ambitious targets for growth in the agriculture sector with emphasis on high value agriculture, improved productivity, profitability and exports. These targets could only be achieved if agriculture is led by a viable, innovative and productive research system in the country, he added.
Underpinning the strategic role of Parc in advancing agricultural research, Sikandar Bosan said the Council was mandated to stay on the forefront of scientific and technological advances by implementing the national agricultural research strategy consistent with the agricultural development objectives and needs of the farming community.
He recalled that between 1980 and 1990, the national agriculture research system led by Parc had been instrumental in the development and dissemination of green revolution technologies leading to more than doubling of yield of wheat and rice, achieving food security, reducing rural poverty, increasing farm incomes and improving quality of life in rural Pakistan.
The minister said he was glad to mention that Parc had undertaken several initiatives during FY06 to make its research system more efficient, vibrant, and responsive to the emerging challenges.
"The recent paradigm shift from green revolution to gene revolution, affords the potential to develop varieties, which are resistant to pests and diseases, tolerant to salinity, drought, heat and cold, and resistant to herbicides," he said.
Dilating upon the problems confronted by Parc scientists, Sikandar Bosan said the issues relating to salary structure, career stagnation, pay and pension fixation of the agriculture scientists of Parc was a cause of concern to the Boaed as its various recommendations on the issues remained unimplemented for several years.
"How can we expect these scientists to bring miracles in an environment where over 130 scientists with more than 10 to 20 years service in Grade - 18 are awaiting promotion to next scale, more than 100 cases of pay and pension fixation kept pending within the Council for want of clearance, whereas another 60 such cases are in the courts of law," he deplored.
The minister urged the authorities concerned to resolve the long overdue cases and submit their report at the next Board meeting.
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