TOBA TEK SINGH, Jan 21: Even though Toba Tek Singh is the only district in Punjab which has surplus wheat stocks, people are facing shortage of flour.

There are 458,000 bags in its godowns and another 16,000 bags of red wheat imported by the Trading Corporation of Pakistan have also been supplied to the food department here.

District Food Controller Chaudhry Toufique Ahmad said his department supplied 1,440 bags every day to 13 mills in the district which produced 5,760 bags of 20 kilo each every day which were supplied to the fair price shops or dealers. He said in Toba city, there were only two mills which produced 824 bags every day except for Sundays.

He said 60 bags were separately supplied to 15 tandoor owners in the town every day, including Sunday, from the 824 bags for a ‘sassti roti’ scheme. He said under the provincial government’s policy, the district needed only 150,000 wheat bags for the next three months and his department had sufficient stock of wheat. He claimed that there was no shortage of flour. The situation in the city, however, is otherwise as 824 bags are insufficient for the town of 75,000 population. People from the nearby villages also buy flour from the city. Dealers or fair price shop owners have no flour after 11am as it ends in just few hours after it is supplied to them in the morning. People have demanded that the chief minister order the department to increase the wheat quota for the town.