950823

Govt urged

to announce

support price

for onion

RECORDER REPORT

HYDERABAD: The President Sindh Abadgar Board, Ali Mir Shah has demanded of the governmentto announce the support price of onion for the year 1995-96 without any further delay to enable the growers to do proper planning in advance.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, he said that the government should learn a lesson from the past experiences and added that last year the government had neither announced the support price on time nor made any arrangements to purchase the crop with the result that the entire onion crop was destroyed resulting in acute shortage of onions in the country.

He said that the government had to spend a considerable amount of foreign exchange on the import of onions from Bharat. He reminded the government that when Bharati onions arrived in the country, the Pakistani crop was ready to be marketed but the growers of Punjab and Sindh were economically destroyed.

He maintained that the only beneficiary of the imported onions were the importers. He said this mistake should not be repeated as the onion crop was now at the sowing stage and it was therefore, imperative that the support price for onions should be announced now.

Shah pointed out that Sindh produced surplus onions which could be exported and therefore, the government should provide incentives to the growers and protect the interests of consumers.