For the right price: AAC delegation to discuss wheat subsidy with federal minister, G-B CM

Protest body chief claims agreement reached to lower price to Rs11/kg .

GILGIT:

As protests against the federal government’s reduction in wheat subsidy continue across Gilgit-Baltistan (G-B), a delegation of the Awami Action Committee (AAC) is in Islamabad to hold talks with the federal government and G-B Chief Minister Syed Mehdi Shah.

Minister for Kashmir Affairs and G-B Barjees Tahir will be heading the federal government’s side while the AAC delegation comprises Abdul Sami and Mirza Hussain, among others.

According to AAC Chairman Ehsan Ali, the talks are bearing fruit but the government is reluctant to issue a notification to this effect. “It has been agreed that the price of one kilogramme of wheat will be lowered from Rs14 to Rs11. But I am surprised that the government is hesitant in issuing the notification for it,” he said.

At an official meeting on Friday, the federal government constituted a new committee to present its recommendations regarding the wheat subsidy which would then be sent to the prime minister.

Addressing a news conference after the meeting, Tahir had said the committee — comprising three members of the G-B Council and one provincial minister — would prepare the recommendations, which would be presented to the prime minister, who will take the final decision in this regard.

Meanwhile, Ehsan Ali warned on Saturday that the scores of protesters assembled in G-B could take matters into their own hands if their demands are not met.

“We are under immense pressure and I am afraid we may not be able to keep tempers cool any longer,” Ali told reporters outside a protest camp in Gilgit which has become the centre of the protests since the strike call on April 15.

He said in case the decision to restore the subsidy is delayed unnecessarily, people’s properties and lives would be in danger.

Ali termed the ongoing struggle for wheat subsidy a war between the poor and the elite. The ongoing mass movement, he maintained, has brought together various sects that had otherwise never united for a common cause.

AAC is an alliance of over 20 religious, nationalist and political groups formed earlier this year to restore the government subsidy on wheat. The region-specific subsidy has continued for decades, regardless of which party was in power at the centre, but was reportedly reduced recently, leading to demonstrations across the region.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 27^th, 2014.