GILGIT, Dec 14: Flour mills in the Northern Areas are facing closure as they are not getting wheat quota in accordance with their production capacity, sources have told Dawn.

They said there were nine flourmills in the region with a capacity to grind over 10,800 bags of wheat per day but only 100 bags were being supplied to each mill. As a result the mills remained idle for 22 hours a day, they said.

Mill owners said they had installed the mills in the remote region at a cost of Rs180m but the Northern Areas food department was allocating wheat quota to illegal plants, which had a capacity to grind 200 bags a day.

They said they produced electricity for their mills through diesel generators. They alleged that illegal plants, which never fulfilled the legal requirements, were being given the same amount of wheat as the legal ones. They said wheat was stored at many illegal plants because those did not have enough grinding capacity.

They said the Northern Areas got 750,000 bags as wheat quota, of which 200,000 were given to the flourmills and the remaining was distributed among consumers in rural areas.

They demanded that the quota, that was fixed 14 years ago, should be increased to one million bags in view of the growing population of the region and the allocation to the flourmills should be enhanced accordingly.

"We will incur losses if we are not given ample quantity of wheat, which might force us to close down our mills," they said. Sources said that in some cases wheat, which was brought from Punjab, was sold in the black market.

They alleged that officials dealing in procurement and distribution of the commodity sold wheat at higher prices to mill owners in the NWFP, Punjab and the Northern Areas and deposited only the subsidized rates in the exchequer.

They said the Northern Areas chief court had ordered a departmental inquiry into a similar wheat scandal in 2003 but the food department was yet to comply with the orders.