Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML) senior central leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi have said the PML-N government has ruined agriculture sector and financially crippled the farming community. "As the farmers had already suffered huge losses due to low prices of rice and cotton crops earlier, Shahbaz Sharif has totally mismanaged the wheat procurement this season. The growers were neither getting full price for their produce nor bardana (gunny bags) from the Food department. They were forced to sell their produce at Rs 1000 to Rs 1100 per maund, instead of government fixed rate Rs 1230 per 40 KG., he added.
Talking to farmers' delegation, Elahi said every N-League government had demonstrated hostility and enmity towards farmers whereas he as Chief Minister had provided maximum possible facilities and incentives to the farmers for their progress and prosperity and solved their problems on priority basis. He had exempted owners of twelve and half acres of land from income tax but now 25 per cent General Sales Tax (GST) was levied on the agriculture sector.
Listing his steps for development of agriculture the former Chief Minister his govt (2002-7) had provided subsidy to farmers on fertilizer and seed, reduced electricity tariff to half for agriculture sector, ensured procurement of every grain of wheat and rice at fixed price, established Punjab Agriculture Marketing Committee, given loans on nominal mark up, got water courses concreted, supplied water till tail, 45 small dams were constructed, thousands of acres of land was distributed among the landless, roads were constructed in rural areas and now 50 thousands kilometres of these farm to market roads were completely decayed and destroyed.
Chaudhry Pervez Elahi further said that the rulers should refrain from snatching loaf of bread from the mouths of children of the farmers, restore facilities, incentives and agriculture policies of our tenure, and should not exploit farmers' families by procuring their crop produced after day and night hard work at much lower prices.