Millers’ strike looms as flour crisis worsens

Accuse food department of not releasing grain despite fresh crop being available

KARACHI:

The impasse between millers and the Sindh Food Department owners continues, with the former blaming the latter for the rise in the price of flour and shortage in Karachi.

Addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club, Pakistan Flour Mills Association Sindh region head Chaudhry Muhammad Aamir and other officials alleged that the food department was preventing shipment of wheat to flour mills.

The provincial government was not supplying wheat as per the official quota to the mills and was also not allowing the mills to buy wheat from traders. The government has imposed an inter-district ban on wheat movement, he said. There are 13 check posts on the routes coming from rural Sindh to Karachi where officials are charging bribes between Rs100,000 to Rs300000 per truck to allow wheat to pass, Aamir claimed.

The “highway robbery” by men in uniform adds to transportation charges due to which the price of wheat has jumped from Rs10,400 per 100kg bag in rural areas to Rs11,800 on reaching Karachi, he claimed.

Aamir said that 80 per cent of flour mills in Karachi have shut down operations. “If the Sindh government does not accept the demands of the flour mills owners, all flour mills will shut down from Thursday midnight and this strike will continue for an indefinite period until the demands are met.”

Millers say there is widespread corruption in the procurement of wheat and with political influence used to hoard 50 per cent of the wheat produced in Sindh.

The chairman said the government was prolonging the procurement campaign which had resulted in an artificial wheat shortage in Karachi. Moreover, there were also concerns that the wheat stock might go bad as occurred last year. Last year, one million sacks were lost in the warehouses of the Sindh government, he added.

Mill owners added that the government had stocks of half a million bags in Karachi which was to be shifted to Punjab for the production of flour, which they said was then distributed for free in Punjab.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 14^th, 2023.