MUZAFFARGARH: Police on Sunday arrested four persons for hoarding sugar and wheat in the district.

During a raid in Daira Din Pannah a police team arrested an alleged hoarder for stocking 40,000 sugar bags. The police seized the commodity and registered a case against the stockist.

In Ali Pur tehsil, during raids led by Assistance Commissioner Amir Cheema, three people were arrested for hoarding 70,000 gunny bags of wheat in their stores, while case was registered against them.

During Ramazan, Deputy Commissioner Dr Ehtesham Anwar constituted a special team to check artificial shortage of sugar and wheat, besides profiteering.

In various raids conducted during the last week, the team imposed more than one million rupees fines on shopkeepers for not displaying price lists of daily-use items issued by the market committee and overcharging.

The middlemen had been purchasing wheat from farmers at lower than the official rate because of complicated process of getting gunny bags and now the commodity was being smuggled to other provinces, including Khyber Pakhtunkhwah and Balochistan.

An official said as the wheat purchase target set for Muzaffargarh and Kot Addu tehsils might not be achieved, the administration was checking the stores of the middlemen and commission agents to overcome the shortfall.

Meanwhile, the rate of wheat husk (toori) that is used as dry fodder for the livestock has gone up to more than Rs500 per mound. Farmers say that hoarders had stocked the wheat husk to sell it at higher prices in winter.

Last year the Punjab government had banned the use of husk in brick kilns to make it available for the livestock.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2019