LAHORE: Ameer, Jamaat e Islami, Pakistan, Senator Sirajul Haq, has impressed upon the rulers to accept the genuine demands of the farmers and workers lest they were constrained to lay a siege of the federal capital.
Addressing a big public meeting at the start of the Kisan Raj Tehrik at Machi Goth, Sadiqabad, he demanded that the country’s farmers be given the same rights/ facilities as were available to the farmers in India. The Kisans should be given farm machinery by the state to bring the barren lands under the plough, free fertilizer to cultivate lands affected by water logging and salinity, interest free loans to install tube wells and for the purchase of seeds and other inputs. He also demanded ownership rights for the tillers who had been cultivating Cholistan lands.
He demanded that the sugar cane price for the next year be fixed at Rs. 250 per maund and the cotton rate at Rs. 4,000 per maund.
Sirajul Haq said that the kisans and workers constituted 70 per cent of the country’s population but they had been ruled by feudal lords, vaderas and capitalists for decades. The ruling elite had been eating the fruit of the workers’ hard work while the poor workers lived from hand to mouth. As such, it was high time that the exploitation of the farmers and workers was stopped and they were enabled to lead respectable lives, he added. He called upon the sugar mills owners to clear the arrears of the sugar cane growers.
Thousands of farmers had reached the spot after traveling on trolleys and carts driven by bulls, camels and donkeys. Great enthusiasm was witnessed among the participants of the rally. “I am demanding the right of the poor kisans living in huts from the elite living in palaces of Islamabad,” he said. He said that the country’s politics and governance had been made the game of the feudal lords and capitalists and said that in prevailing so called democracy, there was no body to speak of the rights of the tillers and workers. Those claiming to be farmers; representatives have no knowledge of the farmers’ problems, he added.
The JI chief said that the ruling elite had been plundering public wealth and had made the country bankrupt and then acquired huge loans from the IMF and the World Bank, thus bringing the country and the nation under heavy debts.
He said that the banks granted loans to the wealthy while the small peasants remained high and dry and did not have enough money to purchase seeds, fertilizer and pesticides. As a result, the farm produce suffered.
