LAHORE: The Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) on Tuesday stopped grinding subsidised wheat and snapped supplies of flour to market as the district administration kept raiding mills premises to verify their stocks.

The PFMA says that the district administration was raiding mills, sealing some of them on spurious excuses and killing their business. The district administration, on its part, insists that since Punjab is running massive subsidy programme, they need to make sure subsidised flour does not slip out of the province.

“For this purpose, the record checking and keeping was must. Variation in millers declared stocks attract administrative action. Otherwise, the millers are free to grind and sell flour,” says an official of the food department.

Dept doesn’t want misuse of subsidy regime

The millers, on their part, maintain that their entire stocks are declared. All these stocks are private purchases, bought to be ground during the rest of the season. Their stock updates are part of the web portals of the food department. The information is shared with the chief secretary office, all the divisional commissioners, even special branch and intelligence bureau. What else the administration needs?

“Flour from this private wheat can be sold where ever the millers want. The government should only worry about its subsidised wheat and track flour made with it. It should not preempt supply of private flour to any part of the country because it was unconstitutional to hamper supplies to any area,” says Asim Raza of the PFMA.

Each mill is given a limited quota of subsidised wheat and flour is traced till it arrives the market. The mills in the entire province are being raided. First, it was Rawalpindi division, then Faisalabad, then Gujrat, Layyah and other district. So, the millers have decided to stop grinding subsidised wheat and stop supplies to market because it was being used as an excuse to hinder their private business as well.

“There would be no supplies of cheaper flour from tomorrow (June 8), unless the district administration mends its ways, he says.

The Punjab government on its part thinks that it is running Rs17 billion per month in subsidy plan to supply flour to people.

“Can it risk draining flour to other part of the country and keeping footing the bill for it? It is tracking and tracing only subsidised flour. Record of mills stocks are also being checked for the same purpose, otherwise why should district administration be running after the millers?”, the official says.

“The department devised strict criteria for the mills to grind this wheat and the district administration is inducted to implement those criteria. Why are millers taking it as a business problem? They agreed to those criteria in the first place. In fact, they are demanding increase in officially subsidised wheat supplies and sneak their own grinding to those parts of the country where it makes more money. The Punjab government does not want to lose distinction between its subsidised supplies and private grinding,” insists the official.

Published in Dawn, June 8th, 2022

Compunode.com Pvt. Ltd. (www.compunode.com).Designed for Dawn.