Roller flour mills owners flooded the city with wheat flour by setting up 70 sale points throughout the city following the consensus reached between mills owners and provincial food secretary to increase the wheat flour price by Rs 40 per bag of 10 kg on the pretext that it would cool down the agitating consumers who were staging demonstration against non-availability of wheat flour and price hike.
The mill-owners set up their sale points on camel carts to disposed of their inferior quality stock of wheat flour which was hitherto rejected by the people, thus earning hefty profit.
This indicates that wheat was in stock with the flour mills which they are believed to be holding for better bargain, and soon after the provincial secretary gave permission they brought their stock in open market which up to Saturday was "not available".
The Provincial Food Secretary, Muhammad Parhiar, who went round the city to monitor the sale, was informed by consumers that the flour on the sales point was of inferior quality and the price was still beyond the reach of common people most of whom, are living below the poverty line.
The secretary said the quality of flour would be tested in laboratory while the price of flour would be restructured as soon as the harvesting of wheat crops gained momentum and new crop started arriving in large quantity.
The secretary later visited the small grinding unit of chakki owners welfare association Nawab Ali and asked him to ensure smooth supply of wheat flour to consumers.
The chakki owners informed the secretary that 85 to 90 percent wheat flour after extracting 10 to 15 percent bran of the total wheat supply to small grinding units was being sold to domestic consumers at the official rates till date but now the small grinding units would purchase wheat from open market and supply flour to consumers at the rate of Rs 15 per kg as desired by secretary.
The question which remains to be answer by the stakeholders and food officials is that, if in a single day so much wheat flour could be made available, why there was shortage and price hike and what are the reasons to allow the flour mills owners to fleece the consumers?
Comments
Comments are closed.