ISLAMABAD, Feb 25: The flour price has shot up in the NWFP again with the provincial food department not paying any heed to the warnings of the Federal Food Committee (FFC) to maintain the level of supply of wheat to mills.

Retail flour price has gone up by Rs60 a 20 kg bag after Feb 18 and the provincial government is doing nothing to lift its quota from Karachi Port and Punjab to sustain supplies.

Retail flour price has again touched Rs400 per 20-kg in the province.

The Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) had earlier warned that the flour crisis could persist till the new wheat crop arrived. Harvest has already started in parts of Sindh.

Sources in the provincial food department told Dawn that the number of districts where wheat shortages were getting acute was increasing. At present, over a dozen districts, mostly in north, including Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan, are facing an acute wheat shortage and mills are not able to use their grinding capacity.

Sources said the flour mills were grinding only half of 3,000 tons of wheat crushed on a daily basis to meet the demand.

While a debate has started over the fate of the FFC itself in the post- election scenario, the NWFP Food Department is not abiding by the directives of the committee.

A spokesman for the FFC told Dawn that the NWFP Food Department was responsible for the mess because it had delayed the lifting of its quota from Karachi Port. He said that enough wheat was available in the country, adding that the FFC had facilitated the provincial government by asking the Trading Corporation of Pakistan and National Logistics Cell to provide trucks to the provincial government for lifting wheat, but the latter was not using the additional facilities. He said the Pakistan Railways had also provided 10 extra bogies to the province for speedy transportation of imported wheat.

The committee on Monday decided that if a province failed to lift its wheat quota from the port by a certain deadline, other provinces would have the right to lift the same wheat.

The committee also wants to scrap the faulty food permit system in the tribal areas. Some people are still smuggling various food items to Afghanistan by misusing these permits. They take many times more than the quantity of various food items required for a certain area and send it to Afghanistan.