SWABI: The farmers and their leaders here on Sunday demanded the government to take steps for checking smuggling of wheat to Afghanistan in the post-harvest period of the crop in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

In a chat with this correspondent, the growers said that the harvesting and threshing of wheat had been completed in all the plain districts of the province and this was the right time to foil the businessmen from procurement of the grain and then its smuggling to Afghanistan while depriving the province of becoming self-sufficient in wheat production.

Anjuman-i-Kasthkaran, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, general secretary Alam Sher Gohati said that wheat grain produced in the district could fulfil the need of the residents to a great extent.

However, he said the businessmen and flour mills owners had been procuring the crop so as to earn millions of rupees at the cost of the local people.

The farmers said that smuggling of wheat to Afghanistan had been a big issue for the people of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which was not self-sufficient in wheat production and depended on Punjab for fulfilling its deficiency.

Tamraiz Khan, a landlord, said wheat smugglers were harming the interests of the province and they should be dealt with an iron hand.

Khalid Khan, Kisan Board district president, said it was responsibility of both the federal and provincial government to take steps for stopping wheat smuggling to Afghanistan.

FIRS REGISTERED: First information reports have been registered in different police stationshere against pickpockets who stole mobile phones and cash from many people during public meetings of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan and PML-N vice-president Maryam Nawaz here in the district and during Azadi March on May 25.

PML- N districtgeneral secretary Babar Saleem told mediapersons that pockets of hundreds of people were cut at a public meeting of Maryam Nawaz in Chota Lahor on May 11 and FIRs had been registered against them in the city police station.

PTI district president Anwar Haqdad said that during Imran’s public meeting at Gohati Cricket Stadium on May 16 pickpockets had deprived several party workers of mobile phones and cash.

Published in Dawn, May 30th, 2022