KARACHI: Sindh Governor Imran Ismail on Wednesday sought centre’s intervention to get the Pakistan Peoples Party to release wheat into open market as the provincial government was deliberately holding back the grain’s stocks in warehouses to cause an artificial increase in flour price.

The governor flanked by Leader of the Opposition in the Sindh Assembly Haleem Adil Sheikh said at a press conference at Governor House that the Sindh government should come up with a logic behind fixing date of Oct 16 for releasing wheat from public warehouses into open market and suspected that the government was in fact deliberately delaying the grain’s release to benefit vested interest groups and damage reputation of the federal government.

He claimed the growing inflation across the country was an outcome of a global phenomenon but the PPP government was using it as a pretext for political point scoring, thus adding to problems for common man.

“While appealing to the Sindh government to release wheat earlier than the fixed date, I also ask the federal government to weigh in and put in place a mechanism for ensuring release of the wheat in time,” he said.

“Otherwise, I warn you that they [Sindh government] will not release the wheat even on Oct 16 and delay it further till November. I have already warned people of Sindh that they will get flour at much higher prices in the months to come and Imran Khan and his government will not be responsible for the approaching crisis,” he said.

“In Punjab, you can buy a 20 kilo bag of flour for Rs1,100 but here in Sindh the same bag is being sold for Rs1,480, which means Rs74 per kilogram. In some cases you can even find the flour being sold at Rs84 per kg in Sindh. It doesn’t end here as chicken is available at Rs240 per kilo in Lahore but in Karachi you get it for Rs280. Why? Because, there’s no price control mechanism in Sindh and every institution has become a hub of corruption,” he said.

He said that it were “ruling mafia” and “feudal class” in the garb of farmers in the province which on the one hand were receiving higher prices of the grain from millers due to their nexus with the government and on the other hand they were supporting the PPP narrative about dearth of the grain.

“According to data, 1.2 million tonnes wheat is stocked up in food department’s warehouses but the Sindh government is not ready to release it, forcing flour mills to buy the grain at expensive rates in open market. On an average, the flour mills are now buying the wheat for Rs3,000 per 40 kg and consequently selling the flour at higher prices,” he said.

He said the data showed that billions of rupees were embezzled at the food department as “traditional annual practice” and in one such practice the authorities declared wheat worth Rs14 billion in godowns as rotten out and eaten by rats.

Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2021