22 October 2004	Friday	07 Ramazan 1425

LAHORE, Oct 21: As flour supplies squeeze in the city and popular anger rises, the Punjab Food Department on Thursday sought help from Wapda to check actual grinding of every mill.

Sources said the department had requested Wapda to furnish it power consumption record of every mill in the province so that it could calculate the exact grinding of each mill.

The department is of the opinion that mills have adopted a go-slow policy for grinding to create an artificial crisis in the market and raise profits.

The department has meanwhile told millers to maintain the record of grinding, stocks and sales - a practice it abandoned a few years ago when the country entered surplus regime.

But consumers remain sceptic of the move as all previous such attempts have failed to effect market and flour supplies.

"This is a blame game that has been going on sine long," says a consumer. There is a crisis of price and supply whereas the department and millers have chosen to trade allegations. The real sufferer is the common man who is affected on two accounts: price and supply. Every time millers cut supply, the department comes up with a new recipe for relief but only to get defeated and devise something new. This is going on for months with no relief to consumers. "

A flour trader said the government was yet to realise that there was a shortage of wheat in the market. The grain imported so far was hardly sufficient to meet requirements of the city of Karachi, leave alone Sindh province and country.

About the crisis in Punjab, sources said the provincial government could not ban movement of wheat because the Supreme Court had held it against Article 4 of the Constitution. "The government is left with only one choice and that is issuance of an ordinance but President Pervez Musharraf is not risking it due to political consequences of the move and negative impact on inter-provincial harmony. All factors have left the Punjab with no choice but to live with the devil till foreign wheat arrives and meanwhile depend on totally non-dependable administrative steps," they said.

The department also admits the basic scarcity of wheat and attaches most of the problems with it. "There is certainly shortage of wheat and a even a small cut in supply creates a huge impact," says an official of the department. The imported wheat has not been able to ease market because it is arriving too slow, and propaganda factor about the quality of Russian wheat is an additional factor. The import process will have to be expedited but meanwhile there should not be any shortage as the provincial government is releasing sufficient quantity of wheat."

The millers, however, have other ideas. Khaliq Arshad, chairman of the PFMA, says that wheat is harvested some six months ago and now market is dry. If available, price of wheat is too high for millers to purchase it, grind it and sell it on government-approved rates. Wheat rate in other provinces is much higher and the grain is draining towards them. In these circumstances, the department should flood the market with wheat as it knows that imported wheat is on its way. It is the department which has adopted a go-slow policy and keeps the market unstable rather than millers.