issue
Missing tales
Relatives share harrowing stories about their missing dear ones in Balochistan
By Adnan Adil
Allah Baksh Bungalzai, an old man, has lost his eyesight crying for his son Hafiz Saeed, who went missing from Quetta seven and a half years ago --  allegedly picked up and detained illegally by security agencies. "I am so hurt that I no more wish to be alive," the old man says with tears in his eyes, "It's better to die once than living in pain all the time."

.

Daylight in a Jar
By Salman Rashid
My favourite cartoon strip is BC by Johnny Hart. And the one I have saved from 2003 has father ant telling kid ant that the inventor of the Mason Jar would each day make a glass jar and put it out in the sun to cool. By and by, he had a whole line-up of these things. Now, out in the sun, the jars were quietly collecting daylight and one day, about sundown, one of the jars blew its top. Presto! We had an extra hour of daylight.

.

issue
Missing tales
Relatives share harrowing stories about their missing dear ones in Balochistan
By Adnan Adil

Allah Baksh Bungalzai, an old man, has lost his eyesight crying for his son Hafiz Saeed, who went missing from Quetta seven and a half years ago --  allegedly picked up and detained illegally by security agencies. "I am so hurt that I no more wish to be alive," the old man says with tears in his eyes, "It's better to die once than living in pain all the time."

On the morning of July 4, 2003, Hafiz Saeed went out of his home at Saryab Road and never returned. Bungalzai lodged a complaint of disappearance with the local police but the police registered it after a delay of two weeks. One month later, a constitutional petition was moved in the Balochistan High Court which is pending to date. Two intelligence agencies told the court they had nothing to do with his son's disappearance, a statement that Bungalzai does not believe. "Security officials do not consider Baloch part of Pakistan and are committing excesses on them," he says. 

This is a typical story of dozens of people in Balochistan who are running around to find their dear ones, allegedly detained illegally by security and intelligence agencies without formally charging them of any crime. A majority of the missing men are members of Baloch separatist organisations and suspects of carrying out subversive activities or of collusion with the Baloch militants involved in the insurgency. Human Rights Commission of Pakistan maintains a list of more than 115 enforced disappearances in Balochistan while Baloch militant and separatist organisations say that more than 9000 people are in illegal custody of security agencies.

Another old man, Abdul Ghani Bungalzai in Quetta, says his young nephew Hidayatullah Bungalzai was a student of BA and picked up by the FC personnel on Sept 3, 2009, from the Balochistan University where he had gone to deposit his examination fee. Ghani says: "When the family contacted the police to lodge a complaint of his disappearance, the police also confirmed that the FC had picked him for some interrogation and he would soon return home." Hidayatullah, however, has not yet returned home. The victim's uncle says they have received several telephone calls about him from a single-digit unidentified phone number, generally an indicator of a phone number of a secret agency.

The situation is so distressing that breaking the strict Baloch tradition of seclusion, the daughters and sisters of missing people have come out to raise the voice for their family members. Young Shari Qanbar, clad in hejab, is campaigning for the release of her father Wahid Qanbar who disappeared from Turbat on March 14, 2007. Early this year, he was produced in the court as an accused in more than 10 criminal cases. Shari Qanbar says: "My father was kept in Turbat jail but afterwards he was transferred to Quetta and has undergone so much torture that he has forgotten my name." She threatens if her father died in the custody, she would go to Islamabad and commit suicide.

Shabbana Majeed, a young girl, hiding her face in veil and wearing a beautifully embroidered long shirt, spits fire while talking about missing people. Her brother, Zakir Majeed, the senior vice-chairman of the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO), was picked up from Mastung on June 8 2009. It is alleged that before this incident Zakir was picked up and detained twice  --  in 2007 and 2008  --  and later booked in a criminal case. On his release from the court, he was again picked up this summer. Shabbana says: "You can hardly imagine how much mourning is there in our home; my mother has spent the entire Eid day crying for her son." 

Two months ago, one Takreem Khan Hashim was picked up by security officials in Kalat in front of 20 men. Hashim used to graze cattle and is believed to be well versed with the routes in the desert leading to water springs where militants usually hide; he was allegedly abducted to help the officials to guide them through the desert. Similarly, Dr Din Baloch, serving at the Civil Hospital Khuzdar, was picked up allegedly for treating the militants. 

The same is the cry of Muhammad Anwer from Turbat whose brother Muhammad Iqbal was picked up along with his three friends on March 14, 2007. All of them were students of BA in Turbat's degree college. He said the FC's Commandant had confirmed in front of Kech's District Nazim, Abdul Rauf Rind, that they have picked these boys and that they would soon release them. After 11 months, the agency freed three friends of his brother, namely Nawaz Yaseen, Jasim Saleh and Zahid Ibrahim, but Iqbal has not been released till this day. Those released confirmed in a news conference that they were detained in the FC camp in Turbat.

Three months ago, Kabeer Baloch along with some other men was picked up from Khuzdar. The other arrested, such as Arif and Manzoor, were released but not Kabeer Baloch. Those who released say they were cruelly tortured in the detention.  Abdul Hayee, 21, was picked up from the front of his house at Saryab Road, Quetta, and his neighbours are witness to this abduction. His father claims after four days of this incident, a security agency's officials came to him and said his son was in their custody and that they would soon release him. More than 40 days have passed since then but his son has neither been released nor has he been given an opportunity to see his son or talk to him on phone. 

A young man Ghazanfar Ali says his brother Mushtaq Baloch, an activist of BSO (Azad), is missing since March 27, 2009 and was picked up while travelling near Khuzdar on the national highway. He alleges that the Frontier Corps (FC) picked up his brother, an allegation the agency denies as it does in all other cases of enforced disappearances. Ghazanfar says once they received a phone call from a security agency that Mushtaq's body is laying in Bolan's mountains but after search they could not find it. Afterwards, they again received the call that his brother was alive and that they should keep their mouths shut. Ghazanfar says: "My parents have not slept for months hoping in vain that their son may appear any time."

Some Baloch activists were released after spending some time in illegal detention of security agencies. They are now primary evidence of enforced disappearances. Shahzeb Baloch, president of BSO (Azad) Quetta, is one such example. He claims the officials of the ISI and the MI tortured him during illegal detention for three months. He says he was abducted from a market by armed men and on his refusal to go with them in their car, he was beaten and forced to sit with them. He said during the interrogation, they used to ask him about Baloch leaders including Zakir Majeed. He said Zakir Majeed was also in the same jail where he was detained and there were two other Baloch men from the Bugti tribe. Shahzeb claims during his interrogation the security agency's officials told him that they had 475 Baloch men in their custody. He says he was threatened if he did not cooperate with them, they would also keep him in detention for an indefinite period of time.

Another released young man Chakar Qanbarani, a member of central committee of Baloch Republican Party (BRP), says he spent more than six months in illegal detention of intelligence agencies before he was released last August. He claims that he witnessed in the jail that several Baloch men were also detained there and were subjected to torture. He says that in the jail he also met another activist Karam Khan Marri, who was missing for more than one and a half year. He says Marri is disabled because of polio but was subjected to torture. Chakar also says that his neighbour Zafar Nosherwani in the custody of intelligence agencies for the last two months.

Nosherwani's brother says he has no hope of justice either by the rulers or the courts. Like many other members of the missing people's families, he also does not trust the judiciary. As a proof, he says that during the hearing of a case about missing people, a judge of the Supreme Court commented: "the disappeared people had voluntarily gone to Afghanistan" --  a remark which to him reveals the judge's mindset. His only appeal to the authorities is to let them at least know whether his brother is alive or dead.

A young man, Muhammad Faheem says his brother Muhammad Naveed, along with some other men, was picked up by the Frontier Corps' officials accompanied by men in plain clothes. He said afterwards his brother was implicated in a case of possessing illegal arms. Faheem says that two and half months have passed but the hearing of the case has not yet started implying the authorities do not have sufficient evidence to prosecute Naveed. The Baloch nationalists allege that judges are not independent and decide invariably in favour of the executive authority often by delaying the hearing and thus giving an opportunity to security officials to keep the accused in detention for a long time.

Sadiq Raisani, President of Baloch Bar Association in Quetta, says that in the past four years, the Baloch Bar Association, a body of exclusively Baloch lawyers in Balochistan, has filed more than 500 petitions in the Balochistan High Court about missing people, but he complains that the judges did not take them seriously. The lawyer says Baloch people have lost confidence in the legislature and judiciary.

The alienation from the state institutions is quite evident. A disappeared man Ali Asghar Bangalzai's son Farooq Bangalzai says Baloch peoples' lives do not matter in Pakistan. His family has thrice moved Balochistan High Court to get Ali Asghar recovered did not succeed. Farooq and his brothers had to give up their education due to financial problems caused by their father's disappearance and they sold off their property to generate money for fighting a legal battle. Asghar says: "Those who abducted my father do not even have moral courage to tell whether he is alive or dead."

The writer was member of the fact-finding mission of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan that visited Balochistan between Oct 3 and 10, 2009.

Daylight in a Jar
By Salman Rashid

My favourite cartoon strip is BC by Johnny Hart. And the one I have saved from 2003 has father ant telling kid ant that the inventor of the Mason Jar would each day make a glass jar and put it out in the sun to cool. By and by, he had a whole line-up of these things. Now, out in the sun, the jars were quietly collecting daylight and one day, about sundown, one of the jars blew its top. Presto! We had an extra hour of daylight.

Then with the beginning of the 1970s, the stupid kafirs of Britain had their first energy crisis. They thought old Mason had not done so well and that they could go one up on him. So they invented that most imbecile of notions to put the clocks forward every spring and back in autumn. Most other countries in the northern latitudes also caught on and the absurdity became norm.

Consider whether you put the clock one hour forward or behind, the sun carries on rising and setting at the time it is supposed to. Which means you have the same number of daylight hours whether you stand on your head or your feet. Which means this is nothing but an exercise in futility. Nevertheless, such idiotic practices can work in educated societies. In a country like Pakistan with education teetering at about three percent, basic literacy at ten and damn the mendacious bureaucrat who tells you we are anywhere higher, this can only be a dud.

Mush-a-riff-raff, the cowardly liar who took Moron Dubya and his coterie on the longest ride concerning the terrorists of FATA, first inflicted this stupidity on us. But he being a fauji, what else but stupidity could we expect of him. Through the four months of this idiotic exercise we suffered from the navan tam, purana tam syndrome across the length and breadth of the country. The raison d etre, we were told, was to conserve electricity. At the end we never learned how much we had saved.

At that time I used to say, and I still maintain that as true, that when our devious bureaucracy want the rulers to look silly, they make them do foolish things. Some smarty-pants bureaucrat with a score to settle with the khakis for stealing his cushy job that meant oodles of moolah on the side gave Riff-raff the idea. The dope grabbed it because, why, the West was doing it too. And if the West was doing it, it must be something really smart.

Last year, the civilian government's first, and again this year this sad bunch has inflicted the same idiocy on us. Having committed the foolishness and because our politicians and bureaucrats have never covered themselves with glory for veracity, they have incessantly trotted out the tripe about having saved a few megawatts of electricity. The question then is: have they canned this saved power and stuffed it somewhere for future use? Aside: one woman, a reader of Urdu papers and an obvious PML (N) follower, told me Zardari was actually canning our electricity and selling it to the Americans!

The rubbish they fed us through press releases read, 'Summer is used to save energy by extending daylight, thus reducing the need for artificial light, air conditioners and other appliances.' (This is an actual quote from a newspaper). Which idiot can believe that if we turn the clocks forward, we will stop using our air conditioners and which greater idiot can show us that it actually happened.

Folks got home one hour earlier and those who could afford them used their air conditioners. Thos who could not afford the power-guzzling machines, simply carried on working until it was six o'clock purana tam. By the way, in offices it is generally one air conditioner to several staff members; at home it is one for two or three persons.

Those who brainlessly followed the West did not realise that in the higher latitudes temperatures are low and people breaking off from work earlier are more likely to spend their time outdoors. Ever seen the crowds on the benches in the sun outside pubs in, say, London quaffing their brews and having a good time?

Midsummer in Pakistan is a time the freaking sun grills you silly. So, pray, what good is an extra hour of daylight in forty-four Celsius? And then comes the monsoon which more often than not fails these days. What doesn't fail is the wretched humidity. Even if you cannot afford air conditioning, you are under or by a fan in eighty percent humidity at thirty-eight Celsius. You don't give a fig about saving power if it means letting your brains run out through your ears.

So how can anyone in their right mind trust this bunch of lying bureaucrats and politicians about having saved electric power? This paper's editorial (1 Nov 2009) makes a sensible line pointing out that in the West studies have showed power saving is never more than two percent (where they sit outside in the sun in summers). It has also made an impassioned plea to do away with this mindless practice. But trust our politicians not to pay heed. In sixty-two years they have not done one sensible thing, how can we trust them to do so now.

Postscript: On the first day of reversion to Pakistan Standard Time, a student of law – mark that – who works as a part-time taxi driver wanted to know if he was required at navan tam or purana tam. This is the third year, second consecutive one, that we have indulged in this puerile practice and yet we still speak of this tam, that tam even when we have reverted to real tam. Meanwhile our politicians lie to us about saving power.

reform
Weakest link
We may have enough of visible security and credible intelligence reports. The only reason our cities continue to be bombed is a lack of coordination among various intelligence and law enforcing agencies
By Waqar Gillani

After 9/11, a special congressional committee released a report describing how many warnings the US government had received before the September 2001 attacks. The report describing the inability of US intelligence agencies to "connect the dots" concluded that the intelligence networks continued to stay reluctant to share the information even following a 1998 report unveiling a possible plot by bin Laden involving aircraft in the New York and Washington DC areas. Interestingly, among the warnings, was one that described the possibility of Arab nationals planning to fly an explosive-laden plane into the World Trade Center. Later, the USA, opting for a full fledged Homeland Security plan, took exemplary steps in improving the coordination between the various intelligence networks.

Pakistan too is facing a huge gap in sharing and coordination of intelligence information. This lack of coordination is being increasingly felt in the aftermath of the "War on Terror" when our cities are in the grip of successive attacks with the help of local facilitators. Local sections of media term these incidents as "Nine Elevens" of Pakistan. But despite all these incidents nothing solid has been done yet for an improved collaborated intelligence system.

Prior intimation of attacks on Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March 2009 and Pakistan Army's General Headquarters (GHQ) in October 2009 appear obvious examples of this lapse. The information of one intelligence agency was ignored by other law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Experts share with The News on Sunday this coordination gap in the current warlike situation.

Brigadier (r) Imtiaz Ahmed, former director general IB, tells TNS, "The role of MI in counterterrorism is limited to the collection of military intelligence, that too to a very limited extent. Factually, the entire responsibility of fighting counterterrorism lies primarily on the two prime intelligence institutions – ISI and IB -- and on provincial police's Special Branch."

"I do not believe in any superstructure and unified command of the intelligence agencies because of their different charter and scope of functions. Primarily, what is needed is an excellent and effective coordination system both in sharing intelligence information and coordination of joint interrogation," he adds.

With regards to sharing of intelligence, he feels there should be a cell of skilful people created in the Ministry of Interior and the provincial police's CID should act as nerve centre for prompt and effective input. This cell should be subsequently responsible for dissemination and monitoring the counter action execution plans on the ground.

Among Pakistan's intelligence agencies, Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI) are directly working under the military command. Intelligence Bureau (IB), directly reports to the prime minister/chief executive. IB deals with independent political affairs and law and order situation. In the police force, apart from the investigation of the police, there are two major agencies; Crime Investigation Department (CID) and Special Branch. Only police and CID can submit the challan and arrest any person while the rest of agencies only put the people in "illegal confinement". Special Branch, usually, is used for the protection of VVIPs. CID, in all the provinces, deals with terrorism and law and order. CID, considered the best organised force in police, was also actively involved in tracing sectarian cases in Sindh during Pervez Musharraf's regime. Then there is Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), working under the Ministry of Interior (MoI), mainly dealing with immigration and cyber crime issues etc. All these agencies are dealing with issues concerning "national security" which include terrorism, sabotage, insurgency etc.

Shaukat Javed, former Inspector General Punjab police, says though all agencies are working on "national security" agendas in their own spheres but there is no mechanism at the provincial and federal level to coordinate these efforts. "They keep the information within the institutional memory despite the fact they sometimes lack capability in completing a mission. It is because of competitiveness." He says sometimes hiding is justified but it must be shared after the operation is fulfilled. "A repository body is missing."

It was General Yahya Khan who first tried to form a national intelligence commission but the plan could not be fulfilled. There have also been efforts for intelligence academies.

This lack of coordination was again observed when Rescue 15 and ISI office in Punjab were attacked in May 2009. There was difference of opinion and no sharing of information during the JIT (Joint Interrogation Team) meetings on this probe.

Police, with arrest powers, can play an important role but only when there are JITs. "There is no proper mechanism except when it is required from case to case basis. The police do not know beyond this," tells Zulfiqar Hameed, Senior Superintendent Police (Investigation), Lahore, who is engaged in various terrorism cases' investigation.

Lt Gen (r) Hamid Gul, former DG ISI and MI, also recalls proposal of a National Intelligence Academy, like in other countries. He says usually JIT setup works but coordination at national and provincial level is badly required. Though the army related agencies have a different mindset and sphere than police. "ISI mostly works with serving army men while IB works with serving policemen. The thinking parameters of both are different. There is need of a secretariat under the chief executive that should prepare position papers, do research, and improve coordination."

Gul recalls a similar proposal given by Air Marshal (r) Zulfiqar Commission in 1989 during the first regime of Benazir Bhutto which could not be implemented. "In that report, I advised to end the political role of ISI but it was disapproved," tells Gul. "Later during Musharraf's regime the role of National Security Advisor could also be expanded to enhance coordination but again it was confined. This gap is the biggest weakness."

Former Interior Minister, Lt Gen (r) Moeenudin Haider believes that intelligence agencies are overstretched regionally and globally. "We are in an active war and the real issue is to apply effort but there is no active body." He says in his era there were only intelligence committee meetings on need basis. He also feels that an effective coordinated mechanism is required to spread across Pakistan, especially, areas where it was almost negligible in the past like FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas), Balochistan, Swat etc. He calls for a parliamentary body to look at the matters of the intelligence agencies and take up the coordination. "Coordination between intelligence agencies is crucial. Currently it is done on a need basis under the Ministry of Interior and there is no institutional arrangement,"

Tasnim Noorani, former federal interior secretary, seconds his views. "The police are working under their old setup of CID and Special Branch that has not been adequately strengthened." He believes the [intelligence] work under police was a very good source of information but was not adequately funded and trained. He stresses the need for an institutional arrangement at the federal level.

In other countries there are intelligence coordination and supervisory committees in the parliament that overview the performance and coordination among intelligence agencies. In Pakistan, there is no such committee except National Security Committee.

Masood Sharif Khattak, former DG IB tells TNS "The coordination should also be timely. If an incident is pre-empted and yet it happens, the exercise of intelligence is not useful at all."

"It is up to the political leadership as to how to run this intelligence system. Politically it is IB and police related agencies dealing with the law and order. ISI has no arrest powers at all. We have the capability but we need methodology to enhance cooperation."

In 1996 Masood Khattak proposed Intelligence and Crime Coordination Committee. "The proposal was widely appreciated and discussed in the concerned circles but later the government was toppled. We were arrested on political grounds but despite that I wrote to the next PM Nawaz Sharif from jail to implement this proposal."

It was 2008 when the federal government decided to have a body to perform, collate and coordinate the whole work of intelligence agencies. Resultantly, a National Counterterrorism Authority (NACTA) was set up which is still ineffective. NACTA was supposed to do coordination but ironically it has been placed under Ministry of Interior as another agency working to counter-terrorism.

"As far as I know, NACTA was formed as a repository of all information of institutional memories," Shaukat Javed says. "Instead of Interior Ministry, Prime Minister Secretariat is its rightful place. PM office needs to have paraphernalia, support staff funding etc. NACTA has been rendered ineffective because IB, ISI, MI, have their own sphere and they would not act under the MoI."

NACTA, working under former DG FIA Tariq Pervez, has not started to function properly, seemingly, because of lack of will to act from the political command. PM has not taken any serious meeting on NACTA.

Former Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, who is also member of the National Assembly's committee on national security, has started discussions on NACTA feeling that all the intelligence are working in compartments. "There is homeland security system in USA after 9/11 and the information is shared at immigration level. But there is no focal point and no sharing system within Pakistan. Incidentally, we are discussing this issue in the national security committee too. The role of NACTA is also under discussion. We are also lacking in investigation facilities and tracing the local facilitators," he points out.

vaqargillani@gmail.com

Rice and fall
Paddy growers in all parts of the country face a prices crisis this year. Worst part: they bear it along with consumers

By Aoun Sahi

Paddy growers were hoping to get a reasonable price for their produce this year. They were unable to reap the benefits of the stupendous increase in the rice price last year. This year the situation on ground is even more shocking for them.

"The situation was not as bad in the last one decade. It seems there is no mechanism in place to safeguard the interests of the farming community," Sajjad Abbas, a depressed paddy-grower from Mandranwala village in district Sialkot, tells TNS. He got a rate of Rs500 per 40 kg of irri-6 this year. "I was banking on basmati crop to cover up my losses in irri-6 crop. But I got only Rs740 per 40 kg of basmati this year. This is ridiculous. I am unable to recover even the input cost with these rates. I don't know where will the money come from to cultivate the next crop?"

Last year Abbas sold out irri-6 at a rate of Rs750 per 40 kg while the rate for basmati was Rs1200 per 40 kg.

"It's an irony that prices of all kind of commodities have doubled during the last one year while farmers are getting around 40 percent less rates for their produce." Abbas blames a nexus of middlemen, dealers, exporters and government officials for the situation. He points out the paddy price always show a sharp increase as soon as the crop goes from farmers to middlemen, mills-owners and exporters. "We are forced to sell paddy to them at the rates fixed by them because government always makes a late intervention and we cannot keep their produce with us even for a single day after the harvest. 100 percent irri varieties and around 70 percent of basmati paddy have already been sold out in our area by the farmers".

They are forced to sell their produce because they have borrowed money in advance from middlemen, traders and millers to sow paddy which they have to return in the shape of their produce. Secondly, there are no storage spaces available to them to store their produce. And lastly, they need money on an urgent basis to sow the next crop.

Many paddy growers in different parts of Punjab and Sindh province have reportedly burnt their produce.

The government has decided to intervene to safeguard the interests of growers but as usual the intervention came so late that the farmers may be unable to benefit from it. On Oct 6, 2009, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the cabinet approved the paddy crop procurement mechanism for 2009-10. The ECC decided that the paddy price for the current crop will be Rs600 per 40 kilograms of irri varieties and Rs1250 per 40 kilograms of basmati (Last year the government had announced an intervention price of Rs1500 per 40 kg for basmati and Rs700 for irri paddy crop). ECC allowed the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Supplies Corporation (Passco) to intervene only when the prices of the commodity would crash. The ECC also instructed Passco to immediately set up paddy procurement centres in the key paddy growing areas in consultation with the concerned provincial authorities.

"So far, Passco has not established even a single procurement centre in Sindh while more than 90 percent of the crop has already been sold out by the growers. It's an irony that official statistics have reported 28 per cent hike in the prices of goods during the last one year but the government has announced a reduction in the prices of non-basmati paddy down to Rs600 per 40kg. The growers have not got more than Rs500 per 40 kg in the province," Abdul Majeed Nizamani, Chairman Sindh Abadgar Board, tells TNS. He thinks that due to bad policies of the government, cultivation of cotton is already high in the rice belt of Sindh. "This year the paddy crop was cultivated on 2.1 million acres in Sindh while last year it was cultivated on 2.6 million acres. Next year there will be a sharp dip in paddy cultivation in Sindh."

The situation is not much different in Punjab. Hamid Malhi, president Basmati Growers Association, tells TNS, "100 percent non-basmati paddy crop had been sold out in the country by the middle of October while the basmati crop ends by mid-December. Passco, so far, has not bought even a grain of paddy and it is mid-November. I am unable to understand for whom this intervention was introduced. Growers are forced to sell their produce Rs500 less per 40 kg than the price introduced by the government. Paddy growers have suffered a loss of more than Rs40 billion due to this malpractice. This money will definitely go into pockets of middlemen, miller and exporters."

He thinks along with Passco, rice exporters are very much responsible for the situation "Rice Export Association of Pakistan (Reap) has been working like a cartel as no firm can export rice from Pakistan without becoming its member. Last year the government had TCP (Trading Corporation of Pakistan) to buy surplus rice from the market but Reap using its influence stopped that move. Passco was given a target to procure one million tons of paddy last year but it procured only 4.5 million tons and Reap played a very significant role in that. The government in early May 2008 announced $1500 the minimum export price (MEP) for rice but Reap forced government to finish it in August 2008 while India still had MEP for rice implemented. India has already captured Iranian market from Pakistani exporters, so over the last two years the export of rice from Pakistan is on decline."

Shamsul Islam, a Karachi-based rice exporter and member managing committee Reap, does not agree that the organisation works like a cartel. "Two years back, there was a huge increase in the price of rice in the international market and because of this phenomenon the production of rice increased from 5.5 million tons in 2006 to 6.9 million tons in 2008. Ironically, the government implemented $1500 as MEP for rice while in the international market prices were at $1300 per ton, so exporters were unable to export rice for four months in 2008."

According to Islam, the price further dipped in the ensuing months while on the other hand, because of Passco's bad intervention, the prices in the local market shot up to Rs4000 from Rs2800 within two months. "This artificial increase badly affected our rice export last year. In Pakistan we still have a stock of around 0.7 million tons of last year's basmati rice. This rice is available at a price of Rs2200 per 40 kg in the market. So, millers are not ready to buy paddy at a rate of Rs1250 this year and the ultimate sufferer is the grower. Passco's intervention will not benefit growers this year just like last year."

Malhi says "Passco has only a staff of 1650 people. It is already overstretched due to 2.145 million tons wheat procured in 2009. In addition, it also holds 0.425 million tons of rice from last year. Passco has got no technical manpower, logistic facilities or organisational expertise to manage highly technical and skill-oriented task of paddy procurement." According to him, the rice production for 2009-10 has been estimated at 6.37 million ton rice (2.5 million tons basmati and 3.87 million tons irri and other varieties). In 2008-09 the production was 6.95 million tons.

Passco general manager field Abdul Majeed Chaudhry admits that so far the organisation has only been able to procure a few hundred tons of paddy crop. "Today, on Nov 10, we have leased out 20 rice mills in Punjab to procure paddy." Passco may have initiated the campaign for paddy procurement but so far it has no funds to pay the price of produce to growers while according to ministry of agriculture Passco suffered a loss of Rs6 billion due to its intervention in paddy procurement last year. "So far, federal government has also not released funds for paddy procurement to Passco," Chaudhry adds.

According to an official of federal ministry of agriculture, banks have already refused to give loan to Passco for paddy procurement. "Last year it suffered a loss of around Rs5 billion for its intervention in paddy procurement," he says.

|Home|Daily Jang|The News|Sales & Advt|Contact Us|

BACK ISSUES