After sudden power shortage causing long hours of loadshedding, atta crisis has hit the headlines in the newspapers. The shrieking headlines in the newspapers about excessive power loadshedding and short supply of atta against demand in the open market has forced the people to resort to panic buying.
There is no doubt that some vicious mechanism has been working to create artificial shortage forcing the people to rush to the shops as well as the Utility Stores to purchase atta lest the commodity not be available next day.
The caretaker Federal and Provincial Governments have been coming out with facts and figures about atta supply position firmly indicating there is no shortage at all but some vested interests had played their vicious game and created false shortage, increasing prices and making the people run here and there for panic buying.
The vicious circle playing the heinous dirty game can well be identified by the reports in the newspapers that the flour mills monthly profits had shot up by as high as 712 percent due to self created false shortage.
President Pervez Musharraf has taken serious notice of atta crisis in the provinces, ordered posting of the Rangers jawans at the flour mills and setting up of the high level Federal Food Committee with immediate effect. If these preventive measures were taken earlier in all fairness then there would surely have been no atta crisis and as such no panic buying which only worsened the overall situation.