Ministry of Textile Industry has so for trained about 400 cotton growers and field workers across the cotton growing areas of Punjab and Sindh provinces for clean cotton picking and maintaining cotton fiber quality parameters.

The MinTex has so far organized seven training workshops on clean cotton picking to aware the farmers and field workers to minimize the adulteration in the product to enhance and improve the quality of the crop and get its maximum prices, said Cotton Development Commissioner Dr Khalid Abdullah.Talking to APP here on Wednesday, he said that the training courses were organized in Multan, Lodhran, Muzaffar Garh, Veharri, Sama Satta, Sarkund and Khairpur.

These courses, he said, were organized in coordination with Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) and Pakistan Cotton Standards Institute (PCSI) aiming to support activities that promote capacity building of the ginning industry with reference to maintaining cotton fiber quality parameters.

He said that average 30 to 45 farmers have participated in the training workshops in which they were introduced with the latest equipments and methodology of cotton picking to maintain the quality of the output from field to market.“We have also trained about 50 women master trainers working in different non-governmental organization in Sindh province for the promotion of agri sector particularly cotton development”, he added.

Dr Abdullah said that these master trainers would further trained the women working in the cotton fields at their door steps and farms enhance and preserve the quality of the cotton.He said that Pakistan is 4th largest cotton producers in the world, adding that meantime it is at the 5th number in the world in term of cotton contamination.

Due to adulteration and contamination of different particulars at field level and storage, local cotton was sold at 15-20 Cents per pound less in international market.The Cotton Development Commissioner said that if contamination issues are addressed at field level it would put positive impact on the final product and maximize the profit of the commodity.

He informed that clean cotton picking courses have received overwhelming response and they asked for introducing quality based pricing system to giving them the better returns of their produces.The MinTex is intended to expend its activity to further areas to promote clean cotton picking mechanism to enhance farm income as well as to attract the foreign buyer towards local cotton, he added.