ACE raids food dept warehouses in Shikarpur

‘Wheat worth around Rs240.77m is either missing or has been illegally sold’

HYDERABAD: In a rare departmental action against alleged corruption in the sale of wheat from the provincial government's warehouses, Shikarpur district food controller (DFC) Muhammad Ashraf Keerio has revealed irregularities amounting to Rs240.77 million. The Sindh Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) raided the food department's warehouses in Shikarpur on Friday after Keerio submitted a formal complaint.

Keerio claimed that wheat worth around Rs240.77 million is either missing or has been illegally sold from the provincial government's storage facilities during the last three or four years.

ACE official Saeed Bhayo, who led the raid, checked and seized the record of facilities from 2016 to 2018. "We have taken action on the complaint of the DFC Keerio," he told the local media, maintaining that ACE would register an FIR and arrest the officials allegedly involved in the scam after completing its investigation.

Govt to import 0.3m tonnes of wheat to overcome flour shortage

In his complaint, Keerio has implicated former and incumbent food department officials for their involvement in this corruption.

Earlier this week, an assistant commissioner in Shikarpur had seized two trucks which were illegally transporting the government's wheat to an undisclosed destination.

Former DFC Mufti Rafique Ahmed, while talking to the local media, claimed that Keerio wanted to implicate him in the alleged scam, accusing the DFC of conspiring against him.

The Sindh government, through the food department, buys wheat from farmers every year to maintain its stocks and to supply to private flour mills. For the upcoming wheat harvest season, the government has set a wheat procurement target of 1.4 million tonnes.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 29^th, 2020.