Staff Reporter
Karachi
Sluggish pace of the Sindh government’s wheat procurement could create another wheat crisis, growers have warned. So far, Sindh’s food department has only met 40% of its purchase target of 1.4 million tonnes.
The food minister, Hari Ram, has written a letter to officials of the department, including chief and regional food officers, threatening to take action against them if they don’t meet their targets. Only 400,000 tonnes of wheat has been purchased so far, the minister told the cabinet on Tuesday.
When questioned by both the cabinet members and chief minister, Ram said the coronavirus had created issues for them. But Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah told him he didn’t want to hear excuses. The food department has also written a letter to the government asking for permission to purchase wheat from the open market. When the government does this, it has to buy wheat at higher prices than it would if it bought it directly from farmers.
The burden of that extra cost is then often transferred onto consumers in the form of higher prices. The Sindh Abadgar Board has called the food department out and said 95% of the wheat crop in the province has already been cut. Vice-chairperson Mehmood Nawaz Shah has said that they have written two letters to the chief minister about the issue. He said the purchasing season starts at the end of February but the food department began purchasing wheat in the first week of April.
If they started early, the market would have stabilised, he said. But when they checked with growers in northern Sindh (Sukkur, Dadu, Shikarpur and Larkana) on April 16 and 17, they said the stores had opened but the government hadn’t bought the wheat yet. In lower Sindh, they didn’t meet their purchase target by 40% to 50%, said Shah, who said they had hoped the government would make up for the poor purchases by buying more in lower Sindh, but that wasn’t the case. He said this could cause food security problems.
When the government’s price is Rs34 per kilogramme, why is flour being sold at Rs70 in Karachi, asked Shah. He said they received no response from the government to either letter. He also said that the ban on inter district movement had left farmers stranded with tonnes of wheat. Shah said at least 3.8 million tonnes couldn’t be moved because of the ban but there seems to be no word on where it went. He slammed food department officials for not being available after doing all this. The Sindh Abadgar Board official also claimed that by purchasing wheat from the open market, the only ones who don’t benefit are the growers and consumers.
