Our Correspondent
Quetta
Prominent tribal leader and former provincial minister Mir Tariq Mehmood Khetran on Tuesday demanded of federal and provincial governments to take measures to provide relief package to local farmers in the province. He said the farmers’ ready crops have been destroyed due to stormy winds, heavy hail and rain in different areas of the province including Barkhan, especially in Union Council Baghao.
He expressed these views in his statement issued here, saying that crops including wheat crop, apple and apricot gardens, cherry, and seasonal pepper, potato and tomato crops were damaged due to heavy hail storms and farmer were facing millions of rupees losses after damaging their crops in the area. He said the federal and provincial governments and other social and welfare agencies and donor organizations to take steps to help for the affected farmers.
He said the majority of people relied on agriculture in respective areas of the province including Barkhan while local farmers were suffering difficulties due to damaging their ready harvests by heavy hails storm in the area, saying that the global epidemic coronavirus was already causing great hardship for the people including farmers.
Meanwhile, Additional Assistant Commissioner-I, Hangu; Shahibzada Saleem chaired a meeting to discuss issues regarding wheat procurement. The meeting which was held on the directives of Director Food Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Deputy Commissioner Mansoor Arshad was attended by DFC Salahuddin Khan, Agriculture Officer Sajid Saleem and AFC Shahid Ali.
Briefing the meeting, Agriculture Officer Sajid Saleem said this year hailstorm and rains had caused damage to wheat crop and as a result its production reduced by 50 percent. Therefore, farmers had kept the remaining commodity for their own consumption. It was unanimously decided to keep in touch with farmers to procure maximum amount of wheat.
DFC Salahuddin said that a total of about two tones wheat had been procured from some farmers on Tuesday and added the food department was making efforts to procure more wheat.