May 30, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 24, 1429

KARACHI, May 29: The Sindh food department in a summary recently sent to the chief minister has disowned the abandoned silos project on the Super Highway, suggesting that the Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Services Corporation (Passco), working under the federal ministry of food, agriculture and livestock, be handed over the project for operation.

Funded by the federal government, the project of a modern grain storage facility in Karachi remains incomplete even after the passage of 23 years and only 11 of the proposed 16 grain silos have been built by the National Logistic Cell (NLC).

Sources say that the summary forwarded to the chief minister states that the Sindh government was not consulted for the construction of grains silos project nor has it spent any money on the project. Its involvement is only limited to the provision of land, which the food department provided on the request of the federal government that conceived the project and provided funds for it.

It further states that the traditional method of storing grain in jute bags in godowns is cost-efficient while the complete construction and operation of grain silos is a sophisticated job for which the food department has neither the expertise nor the necessary funds. If the project was thrust on it, it would prove to be a ‘white elephant’ for the cash-strapped Sindh government, it argues.

It is, therefore, suggested that the federal government responsible for the project’s execution should be asked to hand over the 11 partially built grain silos to Passco, which has some expertise for handling grain in modern storage facilities.Sanctioned during the government of former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the project was to have 16 grain silos, each with 3,125-ton capacity, near the Super Highway. It started off in 1984 in Deh Bijjar Bhutti (now part of Gadap Town) with the federal government’s support. The purpose was to build a modern grain storage facility that could boost exports and cater to national emergencies.

The then Karachi West allotted 70 acres to the provincial food department of which 11.7 acres were used for the project. Though the main contractor and consultant was the Eastern Construction Co, the actual constructor was the NLC, which was supposed to complete the project in a year.

However, it took the NLC six years to build 11 of the 16 silos. The contractor disappeared soon from the scene and it was alleged that the company was fake and had been awarded the contract to favour some influential people.According to the original design, an entire residential area with roads and all allied facilities, including a truck terminal, a warehouse of 1,000-ton capacity, weighing machines, workshops, head-house, hopper, surge bin, godowns, laboratories, an office block, fire control system and weighing bridges were to be set up to handle the bulk storage of grains.

Six locked containers containing machinery imported from Denmark at a cost between Rs6 million and Rs8 million in 1985 still lie at the site in NLC custody. The Sindh cabinet’s committee on privatisation approved the sale of the silos in 2006, but the plan failed to take off. The same year, the NLC gave up its pending amount of Rs1.226 million in a letter sent to the works and services department.

According to former food department officials, the project was delayed mainly because of lack of interest of successive governments, though the records cited the change in the project design and delays in payments as reasons behind the project’s suspension.

The post-harvest losses due to lack of proper storage facilities is almost 60 per cent in fruits and vegetables and between 20 per cent and 30 per cent in grains in Sindh.