27 April 2005	Wednesday	17 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426

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MULTAN, April 26: Two fires that broke out at a warehouse of the Trading Corporation of Pakistan in Rahim Yar Khan have risen eyebrows of several stakeholders, who ask why the authorities did not take measures to avoid further loss of the national asset after the first incident.

As many as 40,000 bales of cotton worth Rs432m, stocked by the TCP at a private facility in Rahim Yar Khan, were burnt to ashes within 10 days. The last fire was reported on Saturday last.

People involved in the cotton trade smell a rat in the burning of such a huge quantity of cotton in fires one after another at the same warehouse.

They say that usually the damaged/burnt bales are segregated immediately to avoid further loss but in Rahim Yar Khan the TCP stocks caught fire 10 days after the first incident and according to the corporation officials the fire ignited again from the remnants of the first fire.

A former president of the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, who did not want to be named, said the first fire could be accepted as an accident but the second fire with same magnitude at the same place created doubts even about the first.

He said normally the tightly-compressed bales smouldered in case they caught fire while the TCP had even lifted bales covered from six sides and wrapped in new iron binding hoop. “The fire can break out if the bales are hugely underweight and loosely wrapped,” he added.

He alleged malpractices in the TCP procurement saying the ginners had to grease palm of the procurement officials at the rate of Rs 25,000 per lot of 100 bales. He pointed out that in Rahim Yar Khan the TCP had in some deals even paid premium price under the pretext of evaluating the quality as grade-II.

He said the seed of irregularities in the procurement was sown with the hiring of contractual staff by the TCP against even as important posts as zonal managers. He said that the services of the officials of defunct Cotton Export Corporation were hired for the cotton season.

An APTMA representative on the federal inter-ministerial committee on cotton, Seth Akbar, said the issue of irregularities in the TCP procurement had always been raised in the committee meetings by several members (including he himself) but the authorities each time gave a deaf ear to the concerns. He said his annual procurement of cotton was 100,000 bales and therefore he could say with authority that a stock of compact bales could not be gutted the way it happened at TCP’s RYK warehouse.

He said any person who had even a little experience of cotton stock handling could determine what would have happened in the TCP warehouse. He said an independent inquiry should be conducted into the loss of such a huge quantity of cotton procured through the national exchequer.

Farmers Vision Forum chairman Khwaja Muhammad Shuaib urged the government to re-evaluate all the TCP stocks with help of an independent party besides taking extraordinary security measures for the safety of the cotton warehouses of the TCP.

He said for the sake of transparency the government should immediately make public the ginnery-wise procurement of cotton by the corporation.

The TCP had procured some 1.6m bales of cotton at the rate of Rs 2,159 per maund (37.324kg) as a public sector measure to keep prices in the domestic cotton market stable in the wake of expected bumper crop in the year 2004-05. When it was striking deals with ginners this rate in the open market was fluctuating around Rs 1,950 per maund.

Hence, the TCP offered Rs 200 more than the market price and therefore there was a competition among the sellers to attract the corporation. Some influential growers-cum-ginners having political clout reportedly influenced the official cotton buying spree to take benefit of the increased offer.

Corporation Chairman Masood Alam Rizvi termed accidental the loss of thousands of the ‘fine quality’ cotton bales. He said a TCP general manager based in Lahore had been directed to submit a report about the two fires.

“The official has yet to complete his inquiry,” he replied when asked about the outcome of the GM’s findings. He said the TCP had on several occasions urged the ginners not to press underweight bales but even then there was a possibility that they might have not done away with the practice (of pressing underweight bales). “However, the corporation had paid the ginners according to weight rather than on the number of bales,” he added.

He said the TCP had furnished the ginnery-wise detail of its cotton procurement to the corners concerned, including the Prime Minister Secretariat and the Commerce Ministry.