Farmers in the southern Pakistan province of Sind are being given land and money by Government agencies, as the nationwide Pakistani Land Reform Programme gets under way.

The Programme was first announced by President Mulfikar Ali Bhutto in his Address to the Nation on March 3rd. 1972. In his speech the President made it clear that what he described as the traditional Pakistani agricultural pattern of feudalism and amassing of vast estates by absentee landlords, was detrimental to Pakistan and would have to end.

The scheme involves the breaking-up of these large estates and the redistribution of the farmers. The maximum holding permitted under the scheme is now 150 acres of irrigated land, and up to 1,000 acres of rain-watered land, a full 70 per cent production on the previous maximum permitted by the 1959 land reforms.

In addition to the land, each farmer is given a government loan of 1,000 rupees (40 pounds sterling/100 dollars), half in cash and half in seeds and fertiliser. They also get security of tenure.

The scheme is progressing well in president Bhutto's home province of Sind. Out of 486,527 acres appropriated by the state, 37,000 acres have so far been re-allotted.

SYNOPSIS: In the Province of Sind, in southern Pakistan, farmers gathered last week for an event that could completely alter their lives. They were meeting at a land registration centre in the town of Sakrand, and by the end of the day they would be transformed from landless tenant-farmers into independence owners.

By signing the registration papers, each farmer received free a plot of land from which they could not be evicted, as well as forty pounds in cash, seeds and fertiliser. The size of the plots varied from one hundred and fifty, to one thousand acres, depending on the quality of the land, or whether it was irrigated.

The land-distribution is part of a Land Reform Programme announced in March by President Bhutto. In a broadcast speech, he told his listeners that the old feudal pattern of Pakistani agriculture was hindering the development of Pakistan, and had to end. Quickly, the old and often west estates were broken up, and signed over to the small farmers to hold and work.