Pakistan Kissan Ittehad Council (PKIC) Monday set July-end as the deadline for government after the latter rejected the council proposal concerning setting up a housing colony by erasing National Agriculture Research Centre (NARC). The central president of PKIC, Khalid Mehmood Khokhar while addressing a press conference at Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) headquarters, said that they would take to the streets in case of any such attempt to erase NARC.
He also warned that the government to fix support price of cotton and rice till the end of July or else be ready to face the music as they would launch massive protests by August. Khokhar said that PKIC will start protest movement in every nook and corner of the country as well as in front of Prime Minister House in August if the government did not reject CDA's proposal to establish a housing colony at the sit of NARAC and failed to fix support price of cotton and rice.
The CDA has submitted a proposal to the Prime Minister for conversion of the land allotted to NARC into a residential and commercial block for generating revenue. Khokhar threatened that they would not allow the Prime Minister and CDA chairman to leave their houses if government implemented the CDA's proposal. "If the prime minister is interested in establishment of housing colonies, he should convert the Prime Minister House and governor houses into housing colonies," he said.
He said that establishment of housing society on NARC land would be a murder of agriculture sector, which has been contributing 24 percent to GDP therefore PKIC would allow the implementation of such move at any cost. Our economy depends upon agriculture but unfortunately agriculture sector has never a priority of the present government, he lamented.
Central president PKIC said that the seriousness of the present government could be judged from the fact that despite sufficient commodity of wheat in the country, the export of 0.8 million tons of substandard wheat was allowed from Ukraine. Khokhar said that despite several requests, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif did not hold a single meeting with PKIC during the last two years. Our government is fulfilling the Indian agenda of destroying Pakistan's agriculture sector, he regretted. He said that the condition of farmers in the country has been worsened during the last two years as input cost of different commodities is increasing with each passing day. "Pakistani farmers can easily compete with the rest of the world if the present government provides a level-playing filed to the farmers like India," he maintained.
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