Wheat crop in Sindh is anticipated to fall short by 25 percent against this year's harvest target, as the province obtained less than its share of water for Rabi crops. A meeting of Sindh Chamber of Agriculture (SCA) here on Friday taking note of the matter has called upon Indus River System Authority (Irsa), the federal and the provincial governments to ensure that the province was provided its share of water.
The meeting, presided over by SCA's President Dr Syed Nadeem Qamar, also protested over the release of toxic water from Manchar Lake into the Indus at a time when the river flow was ebbing. "With the increasing quantity of toxic content in the river, the water is becoming harmful for human consumption," it observed.
Participants also expressed fears of loss to the sugarcane crop if the province continued to receive reduced water supply from Irsa. The conclave of the growers on the occasion passed a resolution calling for constancy in Sindh's water quota and increase in the supply from the ongoing Rabi allocation so that the wheat crop could be irrigated with adequate water before the harvest begins.
The participants of the meeting expressed concern over the non-rehabilitation of embankments, canals and regulators damaged by the recent super flood. "The growers of Khairpur Gambho, Kot Ghulam Muhammad and Naunkot subdivisions getting water from Rohri and Nara canals' would suffer great financial losses in case the irrigation infrastructure is not restored before Kharif," they observed.
The meeting also passed a resolution calling for rehabilitation of the damaged irrigation system before Kharif. The growers criticised some sugar mills for discarding a variety of sugarcane produced in Thatta as being sub-standard and, thereby, paying less to the growers as procurement price. They said that variety of the sugarcane was tested and approved by the Sugarcane Institute of Thatta.