Flour mills involved in malpractices: no action initiated

The Punjab Government has reportedly not initiated any action against "mighty" flour mills involved in malpractices as "indentified" by the Inquiry Committee and just penalized a couple of senior officials at federal and Punjab levels who have good reputation in the official circles.

Punjab Food Department headed by Wajid Ali Shah, has put in place discriminatory wheat movement monitoring system for wheat procurement, according to which only 224 flourmills out of over 1200 mills have been allowed to procure 1.4 million tons of wheat from growers.

According to the Food Department, 726 flour mills will be issued permits by the concerned Food Controller to be uploaded on an online dashboard system.

The people who understand the nitty-gritty of wheat business are of the view that the big mills should be selected on the basis of grinding instead of stocks to ensure fairness. "Stock is also used for trading and can be misreported whereas grinding can be checked from electricity bills," said one of the insiders.

The officials with long term involvement in procurement of wheat maintain that first the government should achieve its procurement target and then allow flourmills to procure wheat from growers, adding that the current flawed wheat procurement and release system will again lead to another crisis in the province.

Flour Mills Mafia in Punjab allegedly have a big say in the wheat procurement policy of crop season 2019-2020 and allocation of quota which will lead to another crisis in months to come. In the past wheat was also released to dysfunctional flourmills in connivance with the mighty millers who entice the Food Department officials at the highest level.

Food Department is portrayed as one of top corrupt departments in the province which is said to in the "pocket" of flourmills who even manage postings and transfers at district level. This has also been stated by the inquiry team which probed wheat crisis in Punjab. The report says that the flour mills are involved in malpractices with the connivance of Food Department employees. Mills are supposed to consume 4.5 units of electricity to grind 100 kg of wheat and their electricity bills should be in accordance with the amount of wheat they grind.

A preliminary survey of 28 flourmills was carried out by the Anti-Corruption Establishment (ACE) Punjab wherein serious discrepancies were observed. The electricity bills point to their involvement in illegal sale of wheat and producing wheat products in excess of government specification to mint money on government subsidy.

Electricity consumption of some mills is seriously low which shows that they are not grinding wheat and selling it either in the open market or to the people who are involved in the smuggling of wheat.

The data with ACE Punjab has indentified a few mill owners who have their mills in Punjab and KP involved in such practices. Post audit of flourmills, especially those involved in such practices, needs to be conducted to take the delinquents to m task.

The sources said, Director Food Punjab allocated five kg per body to Lahore-based flour mills last year which sold extra wheat to Rawalpindi mills at exorbitant rates and pocketed millions. The inquiry committee, however, has ignored this fact that's why the axe dropped on the officials who served in the past instead of an incumbent official.

This is also an open secret that the rate of posting as DFC in lucrative districts is Rs 0 .5 million in addition to payments periodically to the top bosses to keep them content. The under-fire Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) is also probing possibility of " collusive behaviour" at the level of Flour Mills Association as is evident from the records obtained at the time of raid at the Lahore-based offices of the Association.

The Food Department has not set any wheat procurement target for Chakkies as there are 889 registered and 4877 unregistered Chakkies in Punjab but according to ex-Secretary Punjab, the actual number of Chakkies is much higher. These Chakkies buy wheat from the market and sell whole Atta at their own rates. Only this year their registration with the government has begun and they are being supplied wheat from government stocks in three cities, Lahore, Multan and Faisalabad.

The report confirms that the entire operational system of Food Department of every province including Punjab's is outdated, manual and rampant with lack of capacity and excessive malpractices.

The inquiry committee concluded that failure of public procurement was the prime cause of wheat shortages, price hikes, leading to crisis-like situation. The inquiry committee has held all entities responsible for procurement of public wheat stocks failing to meet their set targets during the crop year when national wheat production fell short substantially and when the carry forward stocks remained the lowest as compared to those in the last five years.