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Cases will be registered against wheat traders
- Illegal purchase
DADU, April 7: Traders purchasing wheat without a
license and flour mill owners storing above 250
maunds of wheat will be arrested and cases will be
lodged against them , says Sindh Secretary Food
Mir Mohammad Parhiar.
He said this while talking with journalists here
on Monday. Mr Parhiar said that directives in this
regard had been issued to the deputy directors and
district food controllers, adding they would start
checking licenses and the flour mills' wheat
stocks.
He said that wheat crisis would not have occurred
if the province had harvested four million metric
tons of wheat. He said that the situation had
become complicated after the SIndh growers
produced only two million metric tons. He said
that a wheat procurement target between one
million and 1.2 million metric tons would be fixed
for both seasons.
He said that in 2002-2003, the procurement target
was fixed 500,000 metric tons for Sindh but food
department officials had purchased only 325,000
metric tons, adding that the procurement target
had been fixed at 600,000 metric tons for this
season. He said that the food department had
already purchased 10,000 tons of wheat between
March 1 and April 5, 2004.
Mr Parhiar said that 200 wheat procurement centres
had been established throughout the province to
achieve the target by the end of June 2004. He
said that wheat prices in the local market would
fall within a week if growers stopped selling
their produce to the traders.
He said that growers were previously required to
pay loading charges coming to between Rs2 and Rs5
per bag, adding that now the food department was
paying loading charges to the contractors.
He said that the food department's contractors
were loading wheat directly from farms while
earlier, growers had to bring their produce at
procurement centres. He said that food department
officials would neither contact traders nor
purchase wheat from them.
The DAWN |
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Pakissan.com; Advisory Point
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