Agri Forum Chairman Ibrahim Mughal has urged Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif to bring more transparency in the purchase of wheat jute bags (bardana). They accused the bureaucracy and jute mills of manipulating the whole purchase and supplying substandard jute bags.
Speaking to journalists here on Sunday, Mughal said the bureaucracy had purchased 100-kg gooney bags against the specified lines of threads in each sack. He urged the government to prevent unequal distribution of bardanas at wheat procurement centres.
He said that the whole process of purchase of jute bags and procurement needed extensive monitoring to save the interests of growers otherwise they would be deprived of reasonable incentives.
"Jute bags have been purchased against the approved specification, hitting efforts to extend appropriation to Rs 2.5 billion from wheat procurement," he added.
He demanded a high-level inquiry into the purchase of goony bags to prevent damage to wheat due to low quality bags. He said the Public Accounts Committee had already detected discrepancies in bardana purchase and the government should take the matter seriously. He accused the bureaucracy of planning large-scale embezzlement in distribution of gooney bags and asked the government to intervene immediately. He said that former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi had discouraged purchase of jute bags to avoid misappropriation and made deals with farmers on open wheat trolleys. The experiment proved to be beneficial as it closed the doors of corruption, he added.
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