DADU, April 6: Traders purchasing wheat without a license and flour mill owners storing above 250 maunds of wheat will be arrested and cases will be lodged against them , says Sindh Secretary Food Mir Mohammad Parhiar.

He said this while talking with journalists here on Monday. Mr Parhiar said that directives in this regard had been issued to the deputy directors and district food controllers, adding they would start checking licenses and the flour mills' wheat stocks.

He said that wheat crisis would not have occurred if the province had harvested four million metric tons of wheat. He said that the situation had become complicated after the SIndh growers produced only two million metric tons. He said that a wheat procurement target between one million and 1.2 million metric tons would be fixed for both seasons.

He said that in 2002-2003, the procurement target was fixed 500,000 metric tons for Sindh but food department officials had purchased only 325,000 metric tons, adding that the procurement target had been fixed at 600,000 metric tons for this season. He said that the food department had already purchased 10,000 tons of wheat between March 1 and April 5, 2004.

Mr Parhiar said that 200 wheat procurement centres had been established throughout the province to achieve the target by the end of June 2004. He said that wheat prices in the local market would fall within a week if growers stopped selling their produce to the traders.

He said that growers were previously required to pay loading charges coming to between Rs2 and Rs5 per bag, adding that now the food department was paying loading charges to the contractors.

He said that the food department's contractors were loading wheat directly from farms while earlier, growers had to bring their produce at procurement centres. He said that food department officials would neither contact traders nor purchase wheat from them.