Siraj vows to continue struggle for growers rights

LAHORE
Jamaat-e-Islami Ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has vowed to continue struggle for the rights of growers and workers till improvement of their lot.
Pakistan does not belong to a handful of princes sitting in Islamabad, it is also the land of the farmers toiling day and night, he said while addressing a public meeting at Bahawalpur on the second day of JI’s Kisan Raj movement on Tuesday. JI Punjab Ameer Dr Syed Waseem Akhtar was also present.
Accusing the rulers of pushing the rural areas to poverty and deprivations, Sirajul Haq said it was time to bring all these people to accountability. He demanded the government to provide growers and workers their rights at their doorstep, before the time they besieged the rulers’ bungalows in Islamabad.
He said the country had to pay total loan amounting to $70 billion whereas the wealth owned by Pakistanis lying in foreign banks abroad ran into hundreds of billions. The JI would recover all this wealth from the plunderers and spend it on public welfare projects, he added. He supported the demand for Bahawalpur province and said this was an old demand of the South Punjab which could not be ignored.
He said farmers who constituted a big majority of the country’s population, worked day and night to feed the rest of the people, but their plight remained unchanged. It was the rulers who were eating the fruit of their labour. He said that besides armed terrorism, the country was in the grip of economic and political terrorism. He said the womenfolk in backward areas especially Cholistan had to work hard but they could not provide food or education to their children. He said that the corrupt rulers could be brought to accountability only when the rule of the Kisans and workers was established. He called for announcing the support prices for different crops to satisfy the growers who had been hit hard due to the low prices of crops in the recent years.
self-reliant economy: The Central Shoora of Jamaat-e-Islami has called upon the government to build a self-reliant economy by freeing the country from foreign loans, retrieving the plundered public money lying abroad and improving the taxation system. A resolution adopted at a meeting of Shoora called for eradicating corruption and unnecessary spending. The Shoora noted that government was working on the principle of fiscal deficit with more imports and less exports which caused foreign exchange problem. It said that the fiscal deficit was, to a great extent, being covered by remittances. However, foreign loans from the IMF received on harsh terms had to be returned with compound interest and was a huge burden on the economy.
It said the peasants and workers were not given their due return for the hard labour. It said a big chunk of the population was not getting pure drinking water and electricity was not available to a big part of the country. Similarly, although natural gas had been discovered at different places but the rural and remote areas in Balochistan and other provinces were still without gas. On the other hand, an artificial gas shortage had been created and gas crisis had been caused for domestic consumers and in the CNG sector. It said that despite an agreement for gas supply with Iran, the government had not taken any practical steps in his direction under the US pressure.
It noted that the rulers who had claimed to resolve energy crisis within six months, had in fact, worsened the problem. In another resolution on agriculture, the JI central body urged the government to immediately announce the support prices of paddy, potato, cotton, maize and vegetables. It proposed support price for non-Basmati paddy at Rs1,200, Basmati paddy at Rs2,500, cotton at Rs4,000 per maund, maize at Rs1,800 per maund and sugarcane at Rs250 per maund. It also demanded abolition of GST on agriculture inputs and clearing the arrears of sugarcane growers by the sugar mills. Shoora demanded ban on duty-free import of vegetables and other agriculture products from India. It demanded building dams to save the farmers from the losses caused by floods and drought.