SWABI, Jan 13: Voters are raising the flour shortage and electricity and gas loadshedding issues when the candidates visit them.

Local leaders told Dawn that the exorbitant prices of flour and other essential commodities had become the important issue for the voters. They said a 20kg bag of flour, which was available for Rs270 about three week back, could now hardly be acquired at Rs480.

Leaders and workers campaigning with the candidates said most of the people they visited were preoccupied with the flour crisis.

A candidate for National Assembly from NA-13, Swabi-II, said voters in various localities had told him that they would vote for him without any hesitation if he could ensure the flour supply and reduction in electricity and gas loadshedding.“However, I cannot solve any of these problems. The continuing crises have made us helpless,” he said.

Former provincial education minister Maulana Fazal Ali, who is contesting election from PF-35, Swabi-V on Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s ticket, said that during the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal’s government Punjab had tried on a number of occasions to stop flour supply to the NWFP but the MMA government had apprised the neighbouring province’s leadership about the repercussions of such a crisis. He said the caretaker government had failed to act in time and now the situation had reached an alarming point.

“However, I have arranged flour for the people of my constituency because I was aware of the danger if the crisis deepened,” he said.

Awami National Party’s district information secretary Mohammad Rashid said the government was responsible for the crisis because it had failed to adopt an appropriate policy on the issue. “The MMA government was also responsible because it could not adopt a long-term policy,” he said. “The MMA could not adopt a meaningful policy to store wheat according to the requirements of Pukhtunkhwa’s people.”

Dildar Khan, a Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) candidate from PF-31, Swabi-I, said both the former prime minister and the president had said after the wheat harvesting season that a bumper crop would enable the country to export the commodity.