Scheme makes people feel like ‘beggars’

Rawalpindi: The system of supplying free-of-cost flour has made public beggars who have been entangled in many scuffles over getting a single 10 kg bag of it while many people have been injured in stampedes over the commodity.

The poor people who are below the poverty line in the eye of BISP will have to show their CNIC at four points. After clearance, they will stand in long queues where they will get only a 10-kilogram flour bag and they will get only three bags of 10-kilogram ‘Atta’ in a month.

People below the poverty line and the middle class have appealed to the sitting government to provide them subsidised ‘atta’ bags with a fixed rate of Rs400 only for a month of Ramazan. We don’t need free ‘Atta’ bags as it seems we are baggers, people said. We were easily buying subsidized ‘atta’ bags from trucks by paying Rs648 for a 10-kilogram commodity. Only two per cent of people are getting free ‘atta’ but over 97 per cent of people have been deprived of it, which is not good, the public bemoaned.

People also said that the sitting government at once increased the prices of subsidised 'Atta' bag to Rs1150 against Rs648 after staring to distribute the commodity free of cost.