Sindh govt rejects Centre’s proposal to release wheat from its stocks

KARACHI: Sindh Law and Environment Adviser Barrister Murtaza Wahab has said the Sindh government has rejected the proposal of the federal government to release wheat immediately from the provincial stocks.

Speaking at a press conference here on Wednesday, the Sindh law adviser, who also acts as the spokesman for the Sindh government, said that a decision to this effect would be taken later by the provincial cabinet, keeping in view the prevailing wheat situation in the country.

The Sindh government’s spokesman said on the occasion that an attempt was being made to create a wheat crisis in the country after the sugar crisis due to incompetent rulers in the Centre. "The policy of these rulers is to create shortage of any commodity so as to benefit their allies. We are concerned that Sindh's wheat will be stored in other provinces as there is a big difference in wheat prices in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh," he added.

He said that the wheat crisis had also emerged during the tenure of PTI’s government showing that the mafia behind the crisis had become powerful and the government had bowed before it.

The Sindh law adviser said the federal government had done nothing to tackle the agricultural emergency in the country due to the locust invasion. He said that every action of the federal government was meant to serve its own goals. He said the wheat crisis was worsening as the government had disturbed the balance between demand and supply of the essential commodity in the country.

The Sindh government spokesperson said that the main difference between the PPP government in Sindh and the PTI ruling in the Centre was that they believed in lip-service only "while we believe in doing practical work." He said when this government was formed, there was this problem of medicines. The prices of medicines had been increased manifold. The prime minister took notice but nothing happened in this regard.

He said the federal government had not been able to control the prices of petroleum products and has never been able to make them available at the previous lower rates. He said that power loadshedding in the city continued despite claims of Sindh Governor Imran Ismail and Federal Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar to the contrary.

He said the federal government had failed to rein in the privatized K-Electric despite having 23 per cent share in the city’s power utility while two representatives of the Centre also sit on the board of the utility. Wahab said that those responsible for the electricity crisis in the city had staged a drama in the form of a useless sit-in outside the head-office of K-Electric in Karachi.