Small farmers from across the country on Friday held protest rally here to press the government for their demand of early rehabilitation of agricultural land in the flood-hit areas. They demanded that food must be provided to poor farming families for at least next six months and their other biophysical and psychosocial needs like shelter and health facilities should also be ensured on emergency basis.
The protesters resolved if their demands were not met they would start a nation-wide campaign including hunger strikes and sit-ins in front of all the provincial assemblies as well as Parliament House in the capital.
Women and men farmers from the flood affected areas in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Punjab and Sindh and representatives of Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI), Sustainable Agriculture Action Group (SAAG) were critical of the government in failing to provide required rehabilitation services to the poor farmers. They requested the Prime Minister and the President to immediately activate state machinery to address human rights violations, increased poverty and hunger in the flood affected areas.
Highlighting the farmers' concern, Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) President, Tariq Mehmood said that farmers in rural areas were not aware of agriculture relief package and that both federal and provincial governments were unable to resolve farmers' concerns. He expressed strong apprehensions of looming food insecurity threats. "More than 30 percent of the flood devastated land is already uncultivable due to presence of silt and sand, therefore it will have serious impact on food production," he observed.
"Despite repeated protests and consultations with high ups of provincial as well as federal officials, the poor farmers remain unable to convince authorities to address their problems. The government should immediately start distribution of millions of tons of wheat among the poor masses affected by the recent floods. Our own poor communities are suffering from hunger what is the need to export wheat stock," Tariq added.
He said that the government should ensure provision of sufficient food to farmers for at least 6 more months and women headed households and women peasants must be given priority in relief, compensation and rehabilitation.
They said that in most of the flood affected areas; poor farmers were unable to cultivate important crops like wheat and vegetables due to standing flood water, absence of irrigation system, unavailability of quality seeds, fertilisers and absence of interest free loans. Farmers protested against distribution of poor quality seeds by the government and lamented that in many areas banking tribunals have been set up to file cases against flood affected farmers for recovery of previous loans.
They expressed their dissatisfaction over agriculture relief package and demanded a long-term agriculture rehabilitation programme that should warrant waiving off of government agriculture loans for small landholders and exemption of the agricultural sector from proposed RGST. They called for immediate steps to free poor tenants of the landlords' loans and stressed the need for 'cash for work' and 'kitchen gardening' projects in the rehabilitation program.
The also demanded computerisation of land record in flood hit areas to avoid conflict of interest between tenants, small contractors and landlords. The latter is getting the relief package while the former is not being looked after properly, they observed.
Noor Muhammad Baloch of Pakistan Kissan Ittehad Balochistan said" already flood affected farmers have been served with notices to pay back previous loans. All loans should be waived off and new interest free loans should be given to poor farmers to facilitate agriculture rehabilitation." Gulzar Khan, a small farmer from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa said" The losses of fruit orchards in KPK should be assessed and farmers should be compensated immediately." Mashooq Ali from Sindh said that the late delivery of seed and fertiliser was of little use for wheat cultivation.
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