After nearly a week of protests and sit-ins in Islamabad, representatives of farmers on Tuesday called off their demonstrations after a breakthrough was achieved in negotiations with the government.
\nThe Kissan Ittehad, comprising farmers from across Punjab, was demanding the restoration of the previous tubewell electricity tariff of Rs5.3 per unit and the removal of taxes and adjustments among other things.
\nKissan Ittehad Chairman Khalid Butt, at a media talk alongside Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, called off the protest.
\nSanaullah said that the government had agreed to the farmers\u2019 demands, which included delay and installments in payments of power bills and cancellation of fuel adjustment charges.
\nOn other demands, the interior minister said that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has constituted a ministerial committee \u2014 with Sanaullah on the board \u2014 that would hold meetings with farmers\u2019 representatives and negotiate finer terms of the agreement.
\nSanaullah also said that the prime minister would announce a package for farmers in a week or 10 days which would bring tremendous benefit to the farming community and the agriculture sector.
\n\u201cIt is our philosophy that Pakistan will be prosperous when farmers are prosperous. So we will consider all things in a better manner and solve these problems.\u201d
\nThe interior minister thanked the Kissan Ittehad and the protesting farmers for bearing \u201cdifficulty\u201d and requested them to disperse since negotiations were successful.
\nHe said the nominated delegation members from the Kissan Ittehad should stay for further negotiations and the rest should go back. \u201cIt is our responsibility to solve your demands and we will do it,\u201d Sanaullah added.
\nThe interior minister further assured that the committee would work in a \u201cvery good\u201d way and the farmers would not need to return.
\n\u00a0
\n\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After nearly a week of protests and sit-ins in Islamabad, representatives of farmers on Tuesday called off their demonstrations after a breakthrough was achieved in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1358,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}