PESHAWAR, May 1: A high-level meeting would be held on May 3 to devise strategy for controlling wheat and flour smuggling to Afghanistan from the province via tribal area, a senior official said.

NWFP Director Food Abdul Ghafoor said that Chief Secretary Sahibzada Riaz Noor would preside over the meeting while district coordination officers of all 24 districts and political agents of seven tribal regions would also attend the meeting.According to the official, the Punjab government had agreed to provide 90,000 tons of wheat to NWFP on immediate basis to end food crisis in the province. Supply of the commodity to NWFP from Punjab would start from Thursday, he added.

Director food said that Punjab government had promised provision of 1.3 million tons of wheat during the next season to NWFP. The Punjab government, he added, had also shown its willingness to supply 2,000 bags of wheat flour per day to overcome shortage and price hike of the commodity in the province.

Talking to Dawn, he said that the commitment by Punjab government regarding supply of wheat to the NWFP was made in a meeting between the officials of the food departments of both the provinces earlier this week. He said that the officials of the NWFP Food Department briefed their counterparts in Punjab about the wheat crisis and the problems being faced by the people owing to its unavailability and its spiraling prices.

NWFP needs 3.2 million ton wheat whereas the local production capacity is around 1 million ton per annum. The official said that they conveyed to Punjab Food Department officials that Frontier was faced with a shortfall of 2.2 million tons of wheat annually, which was being met through import.

He said that they had convinced the officials that people faced problems due to which they had agreed to keep supplying 2,000 tons of wheat per day to the province till the crisis disappeared.

During the present season, the Punjab government agreed to give 1.3 million tons of wheat to prevent the crisis from lingering on, he said. He hoped that owing to successful talks with the officials in Punjab province, the Frontier province was unlikely to witness any major crisis of wheat flour in future.

However, sources said that smuggling of the wheat flour to Afghanistan had become a chronic problem for the government. Not only the smuggling of wheat flour but other essential edibles were being smuggled across the porous border that created price hike and shortage in the local market.

They said that supply of wheat flour from Punjab would make little impact on the province if smuggling was not stopped.

Director food said that numerous measures were under way to stop smuggling to the neighboring country and stabilise prices in the province.