Wheat quota for flour mills in Mansehra reduced

MANSEHRA: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Friday reduced daily wheat quota of the flour mills in the district to 125 tonnes from 280 tonnes, which could trigger shortage of flour in the markets, a member of the association said on Friday.

“The Food Department has drastically reduced our wheat quota instead of increasing it in the holy month, which might create a gap between supply and demands in markets,” Mohammad Bashir, the president of Flour Mills Association, told reporters here on Friday.

He said that the government used to increase existing wheat quota of the flour mills before start of Ramazan but this time it was reduced to almost 40 percent. “The daily wheat quota of each flour mill is decreased from 196 bags to only 96 bags hardly before start of Ramazan,” said Bashir. He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mehmood Khan and Minister for Food Qalandar Lodhi should review the decision and restore pervious wheat quota to pass on a relief to the buyers in Ramazan. Assistant Food Controller Shaukat Sultan, when approached, said the government had reduced daily wheat quota of each flour mill from 20 tonnes to 10 tonnes. “Our department supplies wheat to flour mills till April 30th every year as millers acquire wheat from open markets anywhere in the country particularly from Punjab with start of harvesting,” he added. He said that food department starts supplying daily wheat quota to flour mills in April every year and stops its supply on April 30.