Punjab Agriculture and Livestock Minister Syed Ashiq Hussain Kirmani Monday chaired a meeting regarding Transforming Punjab Agriculture Package at Agriculture House Lahore.
Secretary Agriculture Punjab Iftikhar Ali Sahoo, Additional Secretary Agriculture Task Force Punjab Muhammad Shabir Ahmed Khan, Project Director Anjum Ali, Director General (DG) Field Agriculture Ahmad Sohail, DG Agriculture Extension Ch Abdullah Hameed and DG Agriculture Information Punjab Naveed Ismat Kahlon and other officers participated. Addressing the meeting, the minister said that Punjab CM’s agricultural package worth more than 150 billion rupees would prove to be a game changer for farmers, adding a new era of agriculture prosperity in Punjab would began. He directed to highlight the initiatives of the CM Punjab on the Agriculture House website, Facebook, Twitter and helpline, adding that a separate page would be developed for each initiative on the website to guide farmers.
The minister directed farmers to make the formula for the distribution of 35 types of farm level equipments according to the regional formula. For the success of CM’s Punjab Green Tractor Scheme, rules and regulations should be followed and third party evaluation was necessary, he said and added dashboard development, registration and non-transferability for five-year conditions should also be ensured. The agriculture minister directed to make Kisan card mandatory for eligibility for the green tractor scheme and issued the instructions for recruitment of 1,000 agricultural trainee graduates on merit.
The minister endorsed that pesticide, seed and fertiliser companies should be bound to give preference to these trainee graduates for offering jobs in their companies after completing a year of training. Ashiq Hussain Kirmani said that for the promotion of oil seed crops, a comprehensive programme should be made for the awareness of farmers to attract and convince them towards oil seed crops so that we could minimise the import bill. He maintained that by supplying 5,000 super seeders and 2,000 rice shredders to farmers at 60 per cent subsidy would help in controlling smog in the province.
