Daily Times

LAHORE: The Anjuman-e-Mazaraeen, the biggest movement for the rights of tenants in Pakistan, held a seminar here on Sunday to mark the day.

Unfortunately, no prominent event was organised at government level despite 70 percent of Pakistan’s economy is based on it.

However, speakers at the seminar unanimously demanded the government that all farmlands must be handed over to tenants, which they said had been allotted to army and civil officers.

The seminar was organised with the corporation of the Awami Workers Party (AWP) at the Lahore Press Club in which dozens of male and female tenants from Lahore, Okara, Sheikhupura, Sargodha, Pakpattan and Sahiwal districts participated in a big number.

Some of the tenants’ leaders from Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa also addressed the seminar, and demanded an end to legal and constitutional violations regarding occupation of their lands.

They demanded release of their arrested leaders, including Mehr Abdus Sattar, Ghulam Dastgir Mehboob, Nadeem Ashraf, Malik Muhammad Saleem Jakharr, Chaudhry Sabbir Sajid, Hafiz Jaber, Hasnain Raza and 23 farmers from Dera Sehgal. They said that the government had arrested several tenants’ leaders for demanding their just rights.

The seminar was headed by Mian Ashraf while Dr Biukshal Thallo from Sindh, Fanoos Gujjar from KP, Jamila Bibi from Dera Sehgal, Sardaraan Bibi from Okara Army Farms, Liaqat Ali, Farooq Tariq and Shazia Khan of the AWP were also among the key speakers, who also condemned “brutal murder” of a university student, Mashal Khan, in Mardan.