QUETTA, Oct 11: The Frontier Corps foiled on Saturday an attempt to smuggle 87 tons of flour to Afghanistan.

According to sources, FC personnel intercepted several vehicles loaded with flour in Chaman, Zhob, Noshki, Muslimbagh and Dalbandin which were heading towards the Afghan border.

“About 4,381 bags of flour have been seized,” FC sources said, adding that patrolling had been intensified in border areas to curb flour smuggling.

They said that during a special campaign the FC had seized 4,101 tons of flour from the border areas so far and handed it over to the Food Department.

However, despite round-the-clock patrolling of border areas, flour smuggling continued causing an acute shortage of flour in Quetta and other parts of the province and pushing the price of a 20kg flour bag to Rs700 against the official rate of Rs477.

The Food Department had issued more than 500 licences for setting up fair price shops in Quetta alone to overcome the flour shortage but majority of shops were selling it back to mill-owners and making profits instead of providing flour to the people at government prescribed rates.

Sources said that despite getting wheat quotas and grinding charges, mill-owners were not supplying flour to the market.

“Flour is not available at the fair price shop in the Sariab area,” Fateh Mohammad, a resident of the area, told Dawn, adding that he and other people had to buy flour at sky-high prices. An office-bearer of the Flour Dealers’ Association accused the government of issuing fair price shop licences to people who were not connected to the business. “Over half of the fair price shops are never open,” general secretary of the association Abdul Jabbar Achakzai said.

According to him, the licences have been issued on political grounds. He claimed that huge quantity of flour was being smuggled across the border.

An official of the Food Department agreed with the assertions and said that licences had been issued to people who were running public call offices and grocery shops.

However, he said, the department was trying to provide flour to the people at the government rate and teams had been set up to monitor the supply to fair price shops from mills. He said there was no shortage of wheat in the province, adding that more wheat would arrive soon.

He said that Punjab had restored the flour supply to Balochistan which had been stopped in Ramazan, adding that it would help overcome the flour shortage.