ATTOCK, Oct 9: The area of Khairabad, located just three kilometres inside the NWFP limits, has become a transit point for smuggling wheat flour from the Punjab province to the north-western regions, it has been learnt.

After stricter monitoring at Mullah Mansoor check post on G.T. Road near the Attock bridge, the traffickers, who also use women and children to smuggle the staple food, purchase the flour from Attock at Rs420 per 20kg and sell it at Khairabad for Rs650 to 680.

The peddlers use the Ghazi Barotha-Dahknair Road via old Attock bridge to transport the commodity to Khairabad in private vehicles, mostly passenger wagons. Besides, they also use boats to cross Indus River near Bagh Neelab village.

A visit to Khairabad showed that scores of people come to the village to buy the essential kitchen item for prices as high as Rs34 a kilogramme.

The profiteers have even set up sale points in the shed at the Khairabad bus stand on the G.T. Road, where they also offer Rs30 discount on each 20kg bag if wheat flour is purchased in bulk.

According to them, they are getting a 20kg bag of wheat flour at Rs600 from the smugglers.

People come to the sale points even from far-flung towns of Swat, Bajaur, Mardan, Dargai, Nowshera, Topi, Swabi and Malakand to buy wheat flour.

A dealer said he sold about 1,000 bags per day, but complained that “there is still a huge gap between the demand and the supply.”

Hidayatullah, a boy residing in Niazampur, a village adjacent to Khairabad, said he made three to four round trips between Attock and Khairabad each day.

“I earn more than Rs500 daily as Rs130 per bag profit is being offered to me,” he said.

Hidayatullah said five others members of his family were also doing the same “business”, earning more than Rs3,000 per day.

The lucrative activity is also an appealing one for unemployed and poor people of various other villages, including Mullah Mansoor, Dakhnair, Mansar and Attock Khurd.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Attock Saqib Zafar said there was a strict check on the transportation of wheat and flour through trucks plying on the G.T. Road, adding that the district administration with the assistance of the food department and police was planning to control the smuggling through unpopular land routes and the river.

He said the high price of flour in NWFP was the main cause of the problem.

Meanwhile, the Punjab food department in a press release issued on Thursday denied that there was any shortage of wheat or wheat flour in Attock district. It also rejected the impression that smuggling of wheat to NWFP is leaving a damaging effect on the local market.

The statement said the monitoring check posts at provincial boundaries were properly manned and there was no possibility of involvement of the department in smuggling.