The Sindh food department is on it toes to recover the stolen commodity as hundreds of tons of procured wheat is missing from the provincial government stocks.
Provincial Food Minister Jam Mehtab Dhar told reporters on Thursday at the Karachi Press Club that at least 200,000 bags, each weighing 100 kilograms, were short from the government’s 2013 wheat stocks.
This year, Dhar said, the Sindh government was able to procure 1.06 million metric tons of wheat.
After extensive practical work, however, the department has been able to recover much of the stolen wheat bags (135,000), said the minister who was assigned the portfolio two and a half month back.
Terming his department’s performance as satisfactory, Dhar said the balance quantity of stolen wheat would be recovered by the 10th of this month.
Flanked by KPC President Imtiaz Khan Faran and General Secretary Aamir Latif, the PPP minister said he had made enough arrangements to ensure that the capacity enhancement at the government’s godowns could next year rid the food department of costly private rented warehouses.
By December this year, he said, the existing warehouses would be upgraded through developing expanded plinth and ICC floors.
“We would make sure we have 100 percent capacity for the storage of procured wheat,” he added.
Further, the food department through pre-rains precautionary efforts had ensured reduced rain-related damages to the wheat stocks to zero percent. “Not a single grain was damaged by the rains this year,” the provincial minister said.
To a question, Dhar said the government was subsidizing wheat flour by Rs 1.5 billion and had set Rs 39.50 as ex-mill price of the essential kitchen item. He said there was no question of price hike for the floor mills who were buying wheat Rs 34.50 per kilogram. “Today I wrote a note to the chief minister to ensure price control on the market,” the minister said.
Dhar further said that the imported wheat was not qualitative enough to reach local market. It was a must for the low quality imported wheat, especially that of Ukrain, to be mixed with the good quality Pakistani wheat to be distributed on local market. Asked if he was foreseeing wheat shortage ahead, the minister replied in negative.