PESHAWAR: The flour mills owners have expressed concern over the ban on wheat supply from Punjab to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and warned of worsening flour crisis if regular supply is not restored immediately.

The demand was made at a meeting of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter, with its leader Naeem Butt in the chair here on Sunday, according to a statement.

The participants pointed out that KP’s annual requirement was up to 4.6 million tons, but currently the province had only 150,000 tons available in its warehouse, which could meet hardly two weeks requirements.

Briefing the participants, the association’s provincial president Haji Mohammad Iqbal said the government should increase the wheat quota as per increase in the population.

Mr Iqbal said despite clear orders of Prime Minister Imran Khan to remove the hurdles in wheat supply to different provinces, the Punjab government had set up checkpoints to restrict transportation of the commodity to KP. He said the supply had been restricted on the pretext of flour smuggling to Afghanistan, saying the reports about smuggling were wrong.

He said Afghanistan had started purchase of wheat and wheat flour from Kazakhstan at very reasonable price and it did not need to purchase the commodity at higher price from Pakistan.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2020