Peasants, fishermen and trade union leaders on Tuesday urged the Sindh government to announce land reforms process, as after the 18th Amendment in the Constitution, the provincial governments in Pakistan can make the laws.
The provincial assembly should make its own law and ensure its implementation, they added.
They put these suggestions along with a set of demands at a launching ceremony of a signature campaign by Sindh Land Reforms Movement (SLRM) at a local hotel to safeguard the rights of livelihoods of rural workforce, including peasants, fishermen and brick kiln workers.
Hari activists Weero Kolhio, Lali Bheel, Manoo Bheel, Shujauddin Qureshi and Nobahar Wasan of PILER, Dr Hyder Malokhani, Comrade Ghulam Hussain Malokhani, peasants and labour leader Punhal Sario, senior journalist Ishaq Mangrio, AJP leader Mukhtar Abbasi, Razzaq Umrani and others spoke on the occasion.
They said that the government through survey should see the status of land holdings and government's lands should be distributed among landless haris in the province, as they are vulnerable to face food insecurity, disasters and poverty.
They also asked the government to make sure that the Sindh Bank should provide loans for purchasing cultivation tools and seeds to these workforces so they may live a decent life.
Earlier, Shujauddin Qureshi of PILER told the audience that the charter of demands had been designed through a consultation process with the peasant rights activists and civil society representatives to join hands to safeguard the rights of these oppressed rural workforce.
Vulnerability of rural workers can be gauged from the fact that there is food insecurity and about 1.5 million people migrate annually, with their animals in the search of better source of livelihood for them and to feed livestock in these areas. They linked this helplessness of agriculture workers to the absence of land reforms in the country.
The process of land reforms had initiated in early years of Pakistan till 1977 when Land Reforms Act was passed by the National Assembly.
The speakers pointed out that the landholdings by big landlords have increased, causing unbalance in the society, where poor workers of rural areas are facing threats to depleting natural resources, especially agriculture lands, forests, grazing fields and water sources because the government has failed to put the issues related to access to food and safe drinking water on its priority.
They urged the government to cancel the corporate farming policy and retrieve the lands from corporate sectors and distribute them among the haris.
They demanded to release at least 3.5 million acre feet water as per the 1991 Water Accord to save Indus delta and ensure the protection of livelihood of the tail end area people.
Fisheries sector should be protected, as both marine and inland sources of fish production are becoming polluted due to pollution and other destructive fishing methods.
Livestock grazing areas should be earmarked and those already existed be protected, they also demanded.
Kitchen gardening should be promoted at village level in the rural areas, where the people are facing food insecurity and malnutrition.
Fresh study should be conducted to ascertain the status of land holding and the excessive landholding should be recovered and distributed among landless peasants, they demanded.
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