Lahore
President PMLN, Opposition Leader in National Assembly Shahbaz Sharif on Sunday expressed severe concern over scarcity of urea and problems faced by farmers.
He said in a statement on Sunday that farmers are homeless, black marketing and smuggling of urea is continued and government is ‘missing’ as usual.
Shahbaz stressed that smuggling of fertilizers such as urea and DAP must be stopped and exploitation of farmers must end. People and poor farmers are paying cost of this black marketing and government incompetency in every matter.
He held that farmers are screaming about smuggling, where is government?
He further said that if price of urea is surged in the international market, why the government did not take any measure to prevent smuggling?
Scarcity of urea is due to bad governance and corruption which becomes identity of PTI, says Shahbaz.
Scarcity of urea means reduction in crops which shall lead to new problems. Unfortunately, an agriculture country which used to export wheat and sugar is importing wheat and sugar today.
He said that price of a DAP bag was Rs.2400 in our era and today farmers are not getting it in even 10000. This lack of control over prices is peak of incompetency, bad governance and government defeat.
Record production of cotton 14600000 bale was recorded in 2015-16 while this government has nothing except wrong expression of facts and figures regarding cotton production.
Former PM Nawaz Sharif had given historic relief package to farmers in 2015. Billions were paid to them to compensate their losses caused by flood and loans amounting to 32 billion were given to small farmers.
Shahbaz said that this relief program was started in Sialkot and Lodhran on 5 Nov, 2015 with the cooperation of PDMA. 166 centers were made in 33 Districts. Representatives of PITB, NADRA, Bank of Punjab and NPP were included in this program. This was a historic package in which aid was given to 200 farmers from every center through one window operation on daily basis.
The package served as a milestone to facilitate small farmers while today is there is no one to look after poor farmers and people.
