MUZAFFARGARH, April 22: Contrary to Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi’s announcement to start wheat procurement from today (April 23), the Food Department has delayed the process in Muzaffargarh on the pretext of officials’ transfers, Dawn has learnt.

The department has not released gunny bags to farmers while a meeting held under the chair of the chief minister in Lahore had decided that gunny bags would be released to farmers from April 20.

The Dawn correspondent visited the Food Controller office on Saturday and saw that newly-appointed Deputy Food Controller (DFC) Ameer Nawaz Monga was holding his first meeting with his subordinates.

Talking to Dawn, Mr Monga said wheat procurement would be started from April 26 and gunny bags would be issued to farmers from Monday or Tuesday (April 23 or 24). He said that he was meeting his staff to view arrangements of the drive.

The department transferred a number of officials just before the start of the drive, while at the wheat procurement unit in Ghazi Ghat, newly-posted officials had yet to take charge.

Outside the DFC office, the correspondent saw that a clerk and an AFC were bargaining and settling issues related to wheat bags and procurement with wheat suppliers or middlemen between farmers and Food Department officials.

Separately, three dozens of farmers staged a protest outside the Food Department’s procurement centre in Ghazi Ghat on Saturday against a delay in issue of gunny bags to them. Talking to Dawn, Ghazi Ghat Union Council Nazim Nasir Almani said the rising water level in the Indus River had worried farmers in Ghazi Ghat and Gujrat union councils whose wheat yield was still lying in fields.

He said farmers had arrived at the procurement centre in the scorching heat to collect gunny bags but no one was there to deal with them. He said their areas fell in the Indus River belt and the water level in the Indus River was rising thus posing threats to their yield lying in the fields.