Flour millers end strike

KARACHI: After the Sindh government assured an uninterrupted supply of wheat, Pakistan Flour Mills Association announced to call off their strike.

Karachi flour mills were closed for the past three days due to the non-supply of wheat grain. However, on Saturday, the Sindh government pledged to supply 0.5 million 100-kg bags of wheat grains from Monday.

Negotiations between the Sindh food department and Pakistan flour mills were held on Saturday. After the successful dialogue, in a joint press conference Chairman of the Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Sindh zone, Chaudhary Amir Abdullah along with the Director of the Food Department Imdad Ali Shah announced to end of the strike.

Imdad Ali Shah said that for the past few days, there were misunderstandings between the Food Department and flour mills, which resulted in the strike of the millers.

Flour millers assured that there will be smooth supply of wheat

“We are trying to provide cheap flour to the people by giving subsidies of RS 30 to Rs 35 billion rupees every year through flour mills,” he added. Karachi is not the producer of the wheat and the production of the province is not sufficient to meet the demand of the entire province, he said.

Imdad said that there were some technical problems in buying wheat from PASCO, due to which there was some delay in the supply of wheat to flour mills. Now mills will get 500,000 wheat bags from Monday and some Rs 550 million subsidy will also be given, while check posts for wheat movement will be abolished from May 15 across Sindh, he assured.

Chaudhary Amir Abdullah said that as it has been decided that the ban on bringing wheat to Karachi will end from May 15 and wheat supply from the government will also be restored, the mills have decided to call off the strike. “Now, we and the Sindh Government are on one page on wheat issues”, he said.

He further said that actually, it was not the Sindh Government’s fault but there were some problems with the federal government; however, some issues were resolved by sitting together.

As the government has announced, free movement of wheat will take place from May 15 and the people will get flour at lower price, he said.

He said that the food department has also granted the millers permission to purchase wheat from the open market.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023