LAHORE: Various quarters have expressed their concern at the sugar forensic report, saying it exposed weaknesses of the system and its manipulation by the influential.

They have demanded action against the regulators whose negligence led to exploitation of sugarcane growers by the millers.

“Making public the sugar scandal report is a welcome move but not a sufficient step. The government must recover the plundered amount from the guilty and penalise all those responsible for the scam to take the case to its logical end,” Pakistan Awami Tehreek central information secretary Noorullah Siddiqui said in a statement here on Thursday.

He recalled that the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had come into power riding the slogan of accountability and end to corruption but, he regretted, ministers and other important figures of the government had been found involved in the scandal.

He said the report “made it clear in no equivocal terms that a Mr Clean (prime minister) is also helpless before mafias in the prevailing corrupt governance system.”

The Pakistan Kissan Rabita Committee has demanded that the government identify the regulators who connived with the sugar mafia to increase prices of the sweetener in the open market, arrest and penalise them to make public functionaries accountable in real sense.

Referring to various tactics the forensic report exposed as being employed by the sugar mafia not only to exploit the farming community but also general consumers and tax-payers through grabbing subsidies and tax concessions, PKRC leader Farooq Tariq, Saima Zia, Rauf Lund and Mohsin Abdali said if those responsible for the scam went scot free their plundering would continue.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2020