Punjab flour millers go on strike, but Secretary of Food says supplies are uninterrupted

LAHORE – On Monday, Punjabi flour millers kept up their strike in opposition to searches conducted by the Punjab food department to look into a subsidised flour scandal and a wheat quota issue.

However, Punjab Secretary for Food Zaman Watto said that there was a continuous supply of wheat to the flour mills and that there was flour available in the marketplaces.

According to sources cited by Dunya News, the strike in Punjab also had an impact on Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s grain supply. Sadaqat Khan, a flour merchant in Peshawar, said that flour is only available for two or three days, expressing concern that if Punjabi flour mills were not constructed, the province capital will soon be without the staple food item.

After a disagreement over a wheat quota and raids on mills with the provincial food department, flour millers previously declared a strike throughout the whole province of Punjab beginning today.

It was expected that the declaration would lead to a flour scarcity in Lahore and other province-wide cities. According to sources, more than 100 mills’ wheat quotas have been suspended, and several mills in Lahore, Gujrat, and Multan have already stopped operating.

According to further sources, the provincial food secretary had directed that complaints be filed against 10 mills because he wished to have the mill owners detained.

Iftikhar Matto, the head of the Punjab Flour Mills Association (PFMA), claims that the millers want the food department to inspect the facilities in accordance with the established standard operating procedures (SOPs).

Zaman Watto, the secretary for food in Punjab, on the other hand, said that no legal action had been taken against the millers and that 80% of the mills had increased their wheat quota. He said that the majority of millers opposed the strike.

However, he said that information on people who were responsible for four shortages by encouraging others to go on strike was being collected and shared with the relevant authorities.

According to a previous report from Dunya News, the food secretary on Saturday directed Deputy Commissioners of 36 districts to implement Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Ordinance beginning in Rawalpindi, and as a result, plans were made to arrest the owners of wheat mills in Punjab.

The District Food Controllers issued notifications to take action against the Flour Mills Association leadership at the request of the food secretary. A request for legal action against seven Flour Mills Association executives was also issued to the Deputy Commissioner by the District Food Controller of Rawalpindi.

A request for action has been made against Khawaja Imran, Tariq Sethi, Samad Qureshi, Qayyum Sethi, and Riyazullah Khan in the application.

According to the district food controller for Rawalpindi, the proprietors of the flour mills announced the strike during the association’s press conference and also incited others.

The DFC also said in the letter that the Flour Mills Association leaders should be prosecuted under Section 3 of the Maintenance of Public Ordinance, 1960, since the strike notification was an effort to create a false scarcity of flour in the market.