Labour shortage enhances demand for reapers, other harvesting machines amid high prices.

MULTAN -- Demand of wheat harvesting reapers and other machines has been increased in south Punjab in advance before the start of the harvesting process with high prices due to the non-availability of labour for manual wheat harvest.

In past, millions of families used to harvest wheat manually in order to earn livelihood but it was on the decline because most of the labourers have been turned to other services where there was extra income with fewer efforts.

The labourers had to work for the whole day enabling them to harvest maximum of four to six kanal wheat crop daily. Due to the ongoing hot and dry weather spell for the last few days and the shortage of labours, the wheat crop has reached to final stages of harvesting.

However, a low number of labourers were still being seen in fields searching for wheat harvest orders from farmers as they could manage four to five mounds of wheat on the harvesting of each acre.

In order to respond the situation, the local farmers have started visiting different workshops to get new wheat harvesting reapers and getting other harvesting machines repaired in advance.

Similarly, some farmers having resources to purchase the machines were also willing to provide machines on rent basis as they were earning handsome amount and wheat too against harvesting the crop every year.

The reporter observed that harvesting reaper machines of different companies were available at the market with different prices. Most of the farmers have complained about very high prices of the reaper and other machines this year as the prices were almost double as compare to the previous year.

A local farmer Chaudhry Ghulam Mustafa said that purchasing the new harvesting tools were not possible due to very high prices.

He said that the farmers were in trouble as if they failed to get...