June 9, 2002	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 27,1423

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SAHIWAL, June 8: As is now the local Food department has purchased 2.023 million wheat bags through 17 purchase centres in the district.

The purchase staff has allegedly collected two kilogram extra weight per bag of 100 kilogram. Thus the overall extra weight fleeced from growers has been worked out to be 40,465 bags valuing at Rs30.03 million.

Similarly, the purchase staff had also fleeced the growers during the last year. The army monitoring team had found 24,600 extra bags in godowns the cost of which came out to be Rs18.4 million.

The AMT had recommended that the extra weight should be entered in stock registers and the extra money so received be accounted for.

More than dozen councillors in their joint press conference demanded that the extra payment collected by the Food department should be returned to growers.

Councillors including, Ashraf Dhool, Muhammad Asghar, Tahir Masood, Haji Saleem, Manzoor Ahmed, Ghulam Razzaq, Abdul Majid, and Haji Amjad, urged the Punjab governor to take action against the corrupt Food officials.

The councillors hailed watchman Ghulam Muhammad Bodla for highlighting the departmental corruption.

The poor watchman, they said, should not be made an escape goat and instead corrupt officers should be brought to book.

RECRUITMENT: During the first phase, the district government will recruit 500 teachers on contract basis against 2,000 vacant posts after the lifting of ban.