SKARDU, Jun 19 The district is facing acute shortage of wheat flour as flourmills have been closed for the last three days, residents complained here on Friday.

Due to shortfall of wheat stock at the government warehouse, the flour crisis in Skardu has worsened and residents are facing problem to meet their basic need in the landlocked region.

It has been learnt that the flour crisis surfaced in the city after the death of a wheat supply contractor recently. Since then wheat supply to Skardu has been stopped from the Jaglot warehouse while the official store in the city was out of stock.

The civil supply officer has left for Jaglot to make an alternate arrangement to bring the 12,000 bags of wheat to Skardu, officials said. To insure equal distribution of wheat flour to the residents, the district administration has deputed 14 dealers in every ward of the city so that people could get flour from their respective dealers on subsidised rates.

“Taking advantage of the situation, some flour dealers in the city have started selling the commodity at higher rates. A bag of 20kg flour is being sold at Rs700 to Rs1,200 at different places while the official price was Rs230,” a local told Dawn. Qasim Hussain Bhut, president Baltistan Union of Journalist, said that he had been buying bread (roti) from the Tandoor for the last five days, but no flour bag was available in the local market.

“Whenever I ask the dealers they pretend of stock deficit because they can't sell flour bags on exorbitant rates to journalists, however, when common people ask them they sell flour bags at higher rates,” he added.

The people of Skardu have demanded of the government to increase the wheat quota for Baltistan and make sure availability of the commodity in the region.