Sweet and sour

USC has suffered an accumulated loss of Rs13.646 billion from 2013 to 2018

Corruption and decay go hand in hand. Corruption and public welfare do not go together. An endless tale of corruption is being unfolded before us. Sometimes a conscientious official acts in time and foils planned acts of corruption. On May 30, an officer in Lahore thwarted an attempt to shift a huge quantity of subsidised sugar to a departmental store in the city. The sugar was meant to be sold at Ramazan bachat bazaars. According to reports, Deputy Commissioner Saleha Saeed was tipped off a day earlier that a considerable quantity of subsidised sugar from a government warehouse was to be transported to a departmental store. The commodity was to be transferred in a truck of the zonal administration. Officers of the department intercepted the truck on the way and seized the sugar. They also arrested two officials involved in shifting 4,000kgs of sugar to the store. It is not clear whether this sugar was from a warehouse of the Utility Stores Corporation (USC).

However, things at the USC are not satisfactory either. In early November last year, the then federal minister of industries and production informed the National Assembly that all the 4,467 utility stores in the country have been incurring losses for the past five years. The corporation has suffered an accumulated loss of Rs13.646 billion from 2013 to 2018. It has suffered billions in losses since 2008. A few years ago during a Senate panel meeting, a senator said he knew Utility Stores suppliers who have become billionaires overnight. He said one such supplier told him he was planning to buy his own private aircraft.

In Third World countries, good quality foodstuffs are shifted to warehouses of private traders, and from there rotten stuffs are brought to government warehouses. This is mostly done at night under the cover of darkness. Corrupt elements gradually lose fear of the scarecrow and with time they make their perch on their terror.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 3^rd, 2019.

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