January 17, 2008	Thursday	Muharram 07, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Jan 16: Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) spokesman Farhatullah Khan Babar has said the food crisis will not be resolved by deploying Rangers at flour mills but by exposing the manipulators and retrieving the wheat hoarded by them.

In a statement issued here on Wednesday, the PPP spokesman said the party was gravely concerned over the wheat situation in the country, and demanded that the regime came clean on reports of hoarding, smuggling and manipulation of stock by vested interests behind the current crisis.

Mr Babar said at a time when food riots were feared, the claims by the regime that flour prices in Pakistan were lower than in regional countries was adding insult to injury.

The regime, he said, had claimed bumper crop of 23.5 million tons and allowed export but was now importing 1.5 million tons costing over $500 million to the national exchequer.

“Either the claims of a bumper crop were false and designed to justify wheat exports when export should have not been permitted or, if the claims were correct, the wheat stock has been hoarded somewhere and the current crisis is artificial,” he added.

Mr Babar recalled that in the days of the PPP government the premises of the hoarders were raided and stocks of more than 500,000 tons of wheat recovered. However, neither the Shaukat Aziz government nor the present caretakers had the will and courage to raid the premises and recover hoarded stocks, he said.

QURAN KHAWANI: Naheed Khan, the political secretary to slain PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto, held Quran Khawani for the deceased at her residence here on Wednesday.

A large number of party leaders, workers, ticket holders, office-bearers from different districts and sympathisers attended the Quran Khawani.

Prominent among those present were former federal minister Raja Shahid Zafar, Shehnaz Wazir Ali, Nayyar Bokhari, Dr Israr Shah, Amir Fida Paracha, Sardar Shaukat Hayat, Rashid Naseem Abbasi, Anjum Farooq Paracha, Mian Imran Hayat, PPP Women Wing Islamabad president Nargis Faiz Malik, Akram Shah, PPP Women Wing NWFP president Mehrunnisa Afridi, PPP Women Wing Lahore president Sajida Mir, Federal Council member Syed Ibrar Rizvi, Agha Riazul Islam, Sardar Saleem, Qazi Sultan Mehmood, Rasheed Mir and Ibne Rizvi.