Beqaa farmers raise their demands for the new government

Amidst preparations to form a new cabinet, the head of the Beqaa Farmers’ Gathering, Ibrahim Tarshishi, called on Saturday for appointing a new agriculture minister who responds to Lebanese farmers’ demands and bans the import of unwanted goods, pointing to dumping of the markets with smuggled products. Similarly, the head of the Potato Farmers’ Syndicate in Bekaa, George Sakr, demanded the intervention of the Customs and Army to put an end to illicit smuggling activities on the borders. In this respect, a Customs squad stormed on June 2 a warehouse for storing potatoes transported from Syria in boxes marked ‘Lebanese potatoes’ in the Central Bekaa town of Karak. On the other hand, the vice-president of the General Labor Confederation and head of the Confederation of Unions of Tobacco and Tambac Workers in Lebanon, Hassan Faqih, appealed for setting up a disaster relief emergency fund to support tobacco growers and include them in social security, expand tobacco cultivated areas and issue new licenses to farmers. Meanwhile, the director general of the ministry of agriculture, Louis Lahoud, toured on Monday the agricultural sectors in Jbeil to assess their needs. Concurrently, Kesrouan MPs held a broad meeting to discuss ways to compensate farmers affected by the recent storms which hit the country and to facilitate the marketing of agricultural produce in the district. (Al Mustaqbal, Al Diyar, June 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 2018)

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