The Cabinet Sub-Committee comprising Punjab Cabinet Ministers Advocate Harpal Singh Cheema, Kuldeep Singh Dhaliwal and Gurmeet Singh Khudian on Tuesday held meetings with the farmers and employee organizations to discuss their issues and demands in detail, and a further strategy was decided to resolve their issues.
During these meetings which lasted for more than 6 hours here at Punjab Bhavan, the Cabinet Sub-Committee held a meeting with the representatives of the Sanyukt Kisan Morcha (Non-Political), Bharatiya Kisan Union Ekta, Sidhupur and the Sanyukt Ganna Sangarsh Morcha. Many important issues including compensation for crop damage, acquisition of land for highways, and the price of sugarcane were discussed during these meetings. Meanwhile, the cabinet sub-committee assured the farmers that a decision regarding crop damage compensation would be taken soon in the meeting of the state executive committee.
The cabinet sub-committee also assured the farmer unions that a meeting of all the commissioners of the state will be convened soon to ensure that all such cases should be resolved within the next 3 months. On sugarcane price, the Cabinet sub-committee told the farmers that Punjab has already announced the highest price of sugarcane across the country. The Cabinet Sub-Committee directed the Agriculture Department to form a committee comprising officials of the department, sugarcane experts and sugarcane farmers to study the cost price of producing sugarcane, suitable variety of sugarcane for Punjab and other concerns of the farmers so that concrete steps to be taken to address the concerns of the farmers.
In response to the farmers' demand that the price of sugarcane be announced in February itself, the cabinet sub-committee said that the decision in this regard will also be taken by this committee based on experts and farmers after thorough discussions. Earlier, during the meeting with the Punjab Police Corona Volunteers, the Cabinet Sub-Committee directed to constitute a committee comprising ADGP (HR) and two IG-level officers to study their case.
They asked the committee to sympathetically study the issues and demands of Corona volunteers and submit their report. During the meeting with the representatives of the Punjab State Ministerial Services Union, the Cabinet Sub-Committee discussed their demand letter point by point.
The cabinet sub-committee assured the union that their main demands would be resolved in the coming days. Meanwhile, During the meeting with the Veterinary A.I. Workers Union Punjab, the cabinet sub-committee asked the officials of the Animal Husbandry department to consider the legitimate issues of the union sympathetically and resolve these soon.