LAHORE: Flour millers of Punjab have proposed the government to increase wheat supplies to the mills to 25,000 metric tons per day from existing supply of 18,600 metric tons to ensure smooth supplies of the flour to the entire province.

Demand of flour bags in Lahore is only 250,000 per day but only 150,000 per day are being provided creating difficulties for the consumers.

Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Punjab Chapter President Chaudhry Iftikhar Mattu claimed this in a statement issued on Wednesday. He also claimed that the provincial food department instead of increasing wheat quota to mills had imposed a ban on inter-district movement of the private wheat and wheat products made out of it.

He claimed that the deputy commissioners had been directed by the provincial food department to carry out crackdown in their respective areas while pickets had also been installed at the entry and exit point of Lahore.

Now flour mills of Lahore would not be able to send wheat products such as flour, fine, semolina, maida etc to other districts such as Kasur, Nankana and Sheikhupura, Mattu added. Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Punjab Chairman Chaudhry Iftikhar Ahmad Mattu said that the department of food was distributing the quota of wheat unevenly across the province due to which the market was instable. The flour milling industry should be allowed to do business in a free environment, he demanded.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022