Wheat bags worth millions go missing in Benazirabad

Food officials could not answer why the wheat bags were missing, says NAB official

HYDERABAD: As stories about Sindh Food Department's wheat scam continue to unfold, hundreds of thousands of wheat bags have been reported missing from the department's storage facility in Shaheed Benazirabad district.
A team of Sukkur National Accountability Bureau raided a warehouse on Nawabshah-Sanghar road, on Saturday, and found only 61,000 out of a million bags which were procured last year.
An official of NAB told the media that food officials could not satisfy NAB as to why such a large quantity of the wheat bags worth hundreds of millions of rupees were missing. The official said that they have seized the record of the storage facility and further investigation is underway.
Food officials are often accused of illegally selling wheat to flour mills.
An investigation is already underway in Ghtoki district, where NAB is investigating the shifting of wheat worth billions of rupees to flour mills, under the pretext of temporary storage, by food officials. The NAB team, earlier this month, raided several flour mills in Ghotki and found that the mills had utilised and sold the wheat they got from food officials.
The NAB is also conducting enquiries into similar scams that surfaced in Sukkur, Khairpur, Jacohabad, Naushahro Feroze, Qambar Shahdadkot and Kashmore Kandhkot districts. The Sindh Anti-Corruption Establishment is also investigating wheat scams in Karachi, Sanghar and Dadu.