DADU: Acting upon widespread complaints by small growers about misappropriation of government-supplied gunny bags, the anti-corruption establishment (ACE) on Tuesday carried out a raid on the Bolhari food silos, said to be Asia’s biggest, near Kotri town and seized 1.8 million gunny bags and records relating to their distribution.

It was learnt that 1.1 million gunny bags were meant for Dadu and 700,000 for Jamshoro district.

The raid was supervised by Sindh ACE chairman Syed Mumtaz Hussain Shah and Jamshoro ACE deputy director Rafique Ahmed Memon, who were accompanied by Kotri judicial magistrate Syed Farhan Zafar Shah.

The raiding team also carried out a search of the district food controller’s office in Jamshoro located within the Bolhari godown to seize the record of money transactions.

Mr Memon said that an inquiry into alleged malpractices, including sale of gunny bags to traders and influential landowners, would be held and anyone found guilty would be booked and prosecuted.

SANGHAR: A large number of growers held demonstrations in Sanghar, Shahdadpur, Shahpurchakar and some other towns on Tuesday to protest unavailability of gunny bags and irregularities in the wheat distribution process.

They said they held a meeting with the Sanghar deputy commissioner to complain to him about the unfair distribution of 1.5 million gunny bags by food officials but he told them that he could not help them on the issue.

Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2016