Scam: Expired ghee confiscated from Utility Stores

More than half of the ghee had already been sold in April.

LAHORE:

The Punjab chapter of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Tuesday recovered huge quantity of expired ghee from some Utility Stores outlets in Faisalabad.

FIA officials, talking to The Express Tribune, revealed that a factory had supplied 7.8 tons of expired ghee to Utility Stores in the Faisalabad region during April. The officials confiscated 3.8 tons of ghee out of this. The rest, they said, had been sold out.

They said the supply contracts of the factory and the Utility Stores Corporation had expired in 2008 and was not renewed the following year.

After this, the contract was renewed in March 2012 after which the company supplied a huge quantity of expired ghee that had been dumped at its warehouses since 2008 and 2009.

The officials said they suspected involvement of some Utility Stores Corporation officials in the scam.

FIA Punjab Spokesperson Mir Haroon Rasheed said preliminary investigation revealed that some four tons of ghee had been sold to the customers in Faisalabad region only. The agency, he said, was now trying to determine whether expired ghee had also been supplied elsewhere in the country by the same factory.

The FIA Faisalabad Circle sent the raid report to the FIA Punjab director, which stated the details of the raid and the confiscated ghee. An enquiry was then ordered into the matter after the report was received.

The report stated that thousands of cartons were recovered from the shops and warehouses of the Utility Stores. He said the expired dates on the packets were either erased, covered or tampered and a new expiry was mentioned instead.

Talking to The Express Tribune Rasheed said that several officials had been named to be involved in the scam. He said enquiry against them has been initiated.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 23^rd, 2012.