No wheat flour crisis anywhere in Sindh, claim ministers

The Sindh government has been supplying 240,000 tons of wheat to the flour mills in the province on a monthly basis since October 15 to keep the ex-mill price of the essential food commodity as low as Rs55 per kilogramme.

This was stated by Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani and Sindh Food and Taxation Minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla as they jointly addressed a press conference at the Sindh Assembly on Saturday. All Pakistan Flour Mills’ Association Central Chairman Muhammad Yousuf Chaudhry was also present on the occasion.

The food minister informed media persons on the occasion that since October 15, 2021, flour mills of the province were being supplied with wheat on a daily basis in accordance with their demand. He said the flour mill association chairman would corroborate this fact.

He said that up to 50 per cent of wheat supply went to the flour mills in Karachi and rest to the mills in other districts of Sindh.

He said that there was no crisis of wheat flour anywhere in the province from Karachi to Kashmore as fine Aata was available at as low rate as Rs55 per kg.

Chawla explained that the commissioners and deputy commissioners had been tasked with the responsibility to supervise dispatching of the wheat flour trucks from the mills for the availability of the essential food commodity in all areas of Sindh.

He maintained that wheat production in Punjab accounted for up to 70 per cent of wheat flour consumption in the country while the rest of the 30 per cent production took place in the rest of the provinces.

Chawla said the Sindh government in the last year had procured 1.2 million tons of wheat to ensure that the wheat stocks remained available to the flour mills at subsidised rates till the last month in order to control the flour prices.

Ghani said on the occasion that the present ineligible and incompetent rulers in the Centre had been responsible for unprecedented surge in the prices of essential food commodities in the country.

He said the prices of items of daily use had to increase when the US dollar exchange rate had increased to Rs175, petrol price shot up to Rs146 per litre amd there was also unprecedented hike in the gas and electricity tariff in the country.

He said the incompetency of the present rulers could be gauged from the fact that one of the relevant federal ministers had stated on the floor of the National Assembly that he had no idea where 6.6 million tons of wheat had gone from Punjab.

He said the prime minister had also earlier been briefed that sugar prices had increased in the country as three sugar mills of the province had stopped crushing.

He recalled that the former special assistant to the prime minister on petroleum Nadeem Babar had also unduly blamed the Sindh government for natural gas crisis in the country.

Ghani said the federal government had failed to manage the governance issues in the country and leaders of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had unduly claimed that wheat flour at cheaper rates was available in Punjab compared to the wheat prices in Sindh.

The provincial information minister claimed the wheat flour available at cheaper rates in Punjab was not fit for human consumption.

He said the Sindh government had set the wheat procurement price at Rs2,200 for every 40kg of the essential commodity in order to serve the growers in the province when the federal government had determined the same price at Rs1,800.