ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: The Federal Food Committee, constituted by President Pervez Musharraf on Friday night, sprang into action a day later by deputing Rangers and Frontier Constabulary personnel to escort wheat supply from godowns to mills and from mills to distribution points across the country.

President Musharraf constituted the committee, a part of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), to tackle the flour crisis. The chairman of the committee will report to the prime minister.

The committee is now considering a proposal to import a significant quantity of flour along with wheat as a quick remedy to bridge the supply-demand gap. A decision is likely in a couple of days.

“We are going to identify, arrest and bring to book all those black sheep who are responsible for the flour crisis,” Lt-Gen Farooq Ahmed, the NDMA chief, said at a news briefing on the mandate of the food committee.

He said that “administrative failure” and problem in the supply chain were the main factors behind the flour crisis, turning a “situation of plenty” into scarcity.

The Rangers will deploy its units in Sindh and Punjab on the wheat supply chain to discourage hoarding and smuggling. The same job will be performed in the NWFP and Balochistan by the Frontier Constabulary.

“We have asked DGs of Rangers and IGs of FC to send us their monitoring reports on daily basis,” Gen Farooq said.

However, he refused to give a deadline for controlling the crisis and bringing the prices back to its pre-crisis level of Rs12-13 per kg. “The government has completely banned wheat export by the private sector and only ‘government-to-government’ export has been allowed like in the case of Afghanistan.”

Answering a question, he said intelligence reports and figures of various government organisations revealed the smuggling of lucrative Pakistani ‘subsidised’ wheat not only to neighbouring countries but also some far away regions.

Referring to an intelligence report, he said so far 1.5 million tons of flour had crossed over to Afghanistan as against the officially allowed quota of 0.5 million tons a year. This has vetted various reports that a minimum 2.1 million tons of wheat could cross over to Afghanistan this season.

He said that a briefing given to him suggested that sufficient wheat stocks were inside Pakistan, but some “black sheep” were taking benefits of the administrative failures. Everyday, 31,200 tons of wheat was supplied to mills by the government which was sufficient for a population of 100 million as such a supply meant 1.6 million bags of flour daily.

“But, I wonder why still there is a shortfall,” he said.

According to government’s statistics provided to the Federal Food Committee, as on Jan 6, Punjab held a wheat stock of 1.416 million tons which was sufficient for 68 days with a release ratio of 21,000 tons per day. The daily release could cater to 63 million people. But, if the same ratio of supply has to be maintained till April, the province needs additional 0.5 million tons of wheat.

Sindh has a stock of 228,096 tons -- sufficient for 43 days. Daily, 6,000 tons of wheat is being released which can cater to the needs of 18 million people. The province needs 0.5 million tons of wheat to sustain the supply to mills till April.

However, the situation is worse in the NWFP where the provincial government is running out of stocks. The province possesses only 149,880 tons of wheat which will last for only 34 days with a release ratio of 3,000 tons daily. The province needs another 200,000 tons to keep its mills grinding till April.

Balochistan holds the same quantity of wheat which is in the possession of the NWFP. But the provincial stock is sufficient for 42 days. It needs 100,000 tons additional wheat to sustain its mill supply till April.

Overall, the country needs additional 1.3 million tons of wheat.