LAYYAH, Jan 17: Layyah is perhaps the only city in the country which finds no buyer of subsidised flour at sale points set up by the government, if claims of a flourmill owners are to be believed. Seth Muhammad Aslam, a flour miller and president of the Anjuman-i-Tajran, said sale points had been established at the each flourmills but no consumer turned up there. Later, flour millers decided to supply flour to shopkeepers, he said.

The reality, however, is that an alleged flour miller-trader nexus has deprived the commoners from cheap flour and has supplied the commodity to shopkeepers who sell it on inflated rates. Even though the Food Department supplies 1,480 bags of wheat to five flourmills in Layyah, flour is not available to consumers at subsidised rates. Consumers are forced to by a 20-kg flour bag for Rs400 instead of official price of Rs295 per bag.

District Food Controller Sajjad Hussain says the department supplies 1,480 bags of 100 kg every day to the five flour mills in the district, which include 280 bags each to Chand, Faran and Almadni flourmills, 200 bags to Mubashir Abdullah flourmills and 440 bags to Rustam Rehman mills. The mills were to supply 5,920 bags of 20kg to the market but they supplied 2,500 to 3,000 bags to the market, he said.

A Food Department source said the department supplied wheat to the mills at the price of Rs1,162 per 100 kg bags but the millers allegedly sold it to other parties at Rs2,000 to Rs2,100 per bag. After receiving frequent complaints, the controller stopped the daily quota of wheat to Faran, Almadni and Mubashir Abdullah flourmills in the third week of December for not supplying flour to the market. But after a few days, the supply was restored due to political pressure, the source said.

The district food controller said the flourmills association had promised to supply 5,920 bags of 20 kg to consumers.

Prominent social worker Khalid Khan said the flourmill owners were friends of the district nazim and other political personalities, so the Food Department was reluctant to take any action against them.

When contacted, Chaudhry Ishfaq Ahmed, owner of a flourmills, said the shortage of flourmills was due to long spells of loadshedding.