Secretary General Jamaat-e-Islami Liaqat Baloch has called upon the Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and the provincial Irrigation authorities to release water in the Niazbeg branch canal as its closure was destroying rice crop over vast areas. He made this demand after a call on by a delegation of the growers of Thokar Niazbeg area at Mansoora. Baloch said that if the canal was not opened immediately, the growers would be constrained to lay a siege around the CM House.
The delegation informed the JI central leader that the Niazbeg branch canal was closed temporarily for the construction of the underpass on an assurance that the canal would be opened after a week. They further said that under the law, the canals were not closed when the crop was bearing grains. However, they said, the irrigation department had closed the canal under the pressure of the government contractor and the canal was lying closed for the last twenty days.
The Kisan Board spokesman told Liaqat Baloch that the canal would remain closed for another week due to which the rice crop would suffer heavy losses.
Liaqat Baloch said that if the rice crop in the area suffered, not only the labour of the paddy growers would go waste, but the heavy amounts that they had spent on the inputs would be undone and the nation as a whole would suffer.