April 20, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 13, 1429

MIRPURKHAS, April 19: The district food department is likely to miss the wheat procurement target in the district due to prevailing open market rate of wheat which is around Rs680 to Rs690 per 40kg against the government’s rate of Rs625.

Growers are not ready to sell wheat at official rate that has made things difficult for food officials as far as procurement target is concerned which is set at 30,000 tons for Mirpurkhas and Umerkot districts.

Realising the situation high-ups of the department had sent district food controller Abdul Malik Abbasi to help food officials in Mirpurkhas to achieve target but the situation remained unchanged. Wheat sellers with the help of police had transported wheat crop out of Mirpurkhas and Umerkot.

According to district food controller of Mirpurkhas Nasrullah Chandio the slow pace of procurement was largely due to fact that wheat had been harvested as early as Feb 15 in this region while procurement begun on March 15 in the two districts. During this period wheat dealers had transported big quantity of wheat to other areas.

He said that gunny bags were provided by end of March to growers and 10 trucks of wheat in a week were impounded by him as they were heading for open market.

He said that 2000 tons could be procured so far against the target of 30,000 tons at 50 procurement centres where gunny bags were available and payments of wheat bags were being made to growers.

He said main cause of slow wheat procurement was non-imposition of Section 144 thus transportation of wheat outside Mirpurkhas and Umerkot continued.

He added that he had informed the district nazim and the Mirpurkhas DCO for imposing ban on transportation of wheat but in vain.

He said that he was making all-out efforts to check movement of trucks laden with wheat at entry and exit points of districts to increase wheat procurement.

Smuggling: Due to the negligence of food department officials, wheat is being smuggled to Quetta via Jacobabad district on a large scale. Jacobabad serves as a gateway to smuggling of wheat and flour from Punjab and Sindh to Balochistan.

Many trucks of wheat and flour were stopped by the Jacobabad district food controller but they were not challaned and after unloading of trucks they were allowed to leave the area.

Flour which was unloaded from these trucks was supplied to shopkeepers in bags.

When contacted, the district food controller said that there was no law and order in the district therefore he was unable to control the smuggling.

More than 100 trucks of flour and wheat have recently been allowed from Jacobabad route to different locations of Balochistan.

In Nawabshah, A team of food department officials raided various places in the district and recovered 5000 wheat bags on Saturday.

District food controller Mohammad Ayoub Rind told reporters that he along with other staff on a tip-off raided three rice mills in Qazi Ahmed town and recovered 5,000 wheat bags. He said that another team foiled a bid to smuggle 900 wheat bags near a village which was being transported in two trucks and one trailer.