KARACHI, Jan 7: With a wheat flour crisis looming in certain districts of Sindh, agitating flour millers threatened here on Monday that they would shut down their mills in Karachi, Hyderabad and Mirpurkhas in the first phase if Sindh Food Minister Mir Nadir Ali Magsi did not accept their request for an audience by 5pm on Tuesday.
In another development, Chaudhry Ansar Jawed took over as chairman of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association (Sindh) from Mumtaz Shaikh who, the flour millers claimed, was a temporary chief of the body after the end of his tenure on Sept 30, 2012.
Mr Shaikh was present at the food department officials’ press briefing last week.
The new chairman with other members of the PFMA at a press conference at its office on Monday said they had met two representatives of the minister on Monday but the meeting proved futile.
The PFMA would now hold talks only with the food minister in order to avert any possible flour crisis in Sindh, he said.
Mr Jawed urged the Sindh food minister to resume wheat supply to the mills under a liberal policy, impose a ban on inter-provincial wheat movement and procure wheat from the interior of Sindh for the mills in Karachi as wheat stocks in the city had almost exhausted.
Discontinuing the liberal wheat supply policy, the food department last week fixed 550 (100kg) wheat bag per day per mill, threatening to suspend wheat quota of mills who failed to provide flour at Rs32 per kg.
The new chairman said that selling flour at Rs32 per kg was not possible even if wheat was procured at Rs2,800 per 100kg bag.He added that the millers sold flour at Rs37.50 per kg now which should have been Rs40 per kg.
“If the government resumes wheat supply under a liberal policy, the mills will try to reduce the flour rate to Rs34 per kg,” he added.
He said the provincial government had adopted a liberal wheat supply policy to the mills in view of a good wheat crop and to provide flour at reduced rates to the consumers. However, flour rate after remaining stable had started rising during the past one month due to supply of only 300 wheat bags per day to every mill by the food department.
Mr Jawed blamed the exporters/traders for creating a wheat crisis as they lifted wheat at Rs2,800 per 100kg bag from Sindh and sold it at Rs3,300-3,400 in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said he anticipated a deep flour crisis in the next three to four days as wheat stocks were depleting in Karachi while export of wheat was going on.
Our Mirpurkhas correspondent adds: The head of the Sindh food department surveillance team, Shah Nawaz Magsi, has increased the wheat quota for the Mirpurkhas city chakkies by 3,000 bags and now 12,000 bags would be supplied to them.
Talking to the media, Mr Magsi said the government had banned making of ‘maida’ (refined flour) and ‘suji’ (semolina) from wheat, and in that connection it had also taken an undertaking from them that flour mills would not violate the ban, and if found doing so would lose their wheat quotas.
Flour shortage in Sanghar, Dadu
A wheat flour crisis has hit Shahdadpur, Shahpur Chakar, Sarhari, Lundo, Tando Adam and other towns of Sanghar district, where flour price has shot up with the wheat shortage, PPI adds.
Now substandard wheat flour is being sold in the market at higher rates with no check on it by the authorities.
Ali Nawaz Sahito and Ghulam Haider of the Chakki Owners Association said the situation became grave after the Sindh food department stopped the release of wheat to the flour mills and chakkies ending its liberal policy. This step caused an increase in the price of wheat by Rs400 per bag in the open market and now they had to buy wheat at Rs3,600 per bag. The flour price would come down if the government restored the liberal policy and released wheat at a subsidised rate, they said.
Food department official Khadim Hussain Umrani said the department had decided to restore the old policy and now would release 28 bags per month to the chakkies at Rs2,800 per bag of 100kg. He said wheat would be released only after the new policy was officially announced. He said the food department had 32,000 wheat bags in its Shahdadpur warehouse and they had to meet the needs of the entire season from it.
Flour price in Dadu district has shot up from Rs32 per kg to Rs40 per kg and beyond with a severe shortage of the commodity in the market reportedly owing to non-release of wheat to the flour mills and chakkies by the Sindh food department.
People complained that wheat flour was not available even at the state-run utility stores. Chakki owners said there were 400 chakkies in Dadu district, which were given 10 bags each in a week that could not meet the requirement of 1.6 million population of the district.
Sikandar Ali Lakiar, chairman of the Chakki owners association Dadu, said they had no big flour mill in the district after Jamshoro was carved out as a district from the old limits of Dadu district.
“Now, Jamshoro district has 800 flour mills and chakkies in Kotri and other areas that are getting 275 wheat bags a day from the food department. Although, Dadu and Jamshoro are now two separate districts, the wheat quota has not been fixed separately, he said, demanding an increased quota as per the population of the district.