Sir: Sadia Qasim Shah in a section of press on 20th February 2017 has drawn attention to the ban on sale of Pakistani manufactured fertilizers in FATA for security reasons, thereby forcing the farmers to use low quality smuggled fertilizers. The issue needs to be addressed through imaginative preventive measures instead of banning and I suggest registration of dealers by LEAs and monitoring of their stocks by concerned officials. I would like to add here that there appears to be strong possibility of non-availability of local fertilizers in entire Khyber Pakhtunkhwa due to unfriendly approach of Provincial Agriculture Department towards farmers. It may be recalled that in budget 2016/17, a subsidy of Rs 156 per bag of urea and Rs 300 per DAP bag was announced. This subsidy was to be shared on 50:50 bases by the federal and provincial governments. During last week, the Ministry of Food Security had made partial payment of the subsidy claims of manufacturers and importers, withholding amounts yet to be verified by the provinces including KP. The affected companies are learnt to be considering the options for curtailing the sales or raising the selling prices in KP by excluding the subsidy factor of Rs 156 and the voluntary contribution of Rs 50 per bag by manufacturers, thereby escalating the prices to Rs 1705 per bag of Urea and Rs 2800 per bag of DAP. It is strange that the Provincial Government of KPK in political point scoring is pushing the situation to hurt the famers’ community badly. Moreover, the provincial government fails to appreciate that the amount of subsidy has been already deducted at source and their resistance to verify sales is denying disbursement of subsidy to manufacturers, who have already passed on the benefit to the farmers. I on behalf of farmers’ community urge the Chief Minister KP to kindly save us from further agony and follow the example of Punjab that has given huge incentives to farmers. AMMAR MUZAFFAR Via Email