KARACHI, May 12: Initiated as one of the modern grain storage facilities in the country, the Sindh government’s project to build 16 silos near the Super Highway remains incomplete even after the passage of 23 years.
No decision has been taken yet over its future, while the provincial privatisation commission’s bid to sell off the 11 silos built in 1989 at a cost of Rs44 million has miserably failed.
Today, the towering concrete structures appear as ‘monuments’ of colossal waste of public money. The project’s failure, experts believe, is intrinsically linked to the lack of successive governments’ will to resolve the very basic issues of stabilising food prices and ending the continued exploitation of growers, who are forced to sell their produce at lower rates in the absence of any proper storage facilities, at the hands of middlemen and mill owners.
“The wastage of a large quantity of agriculture produce due to the lack of proper storage facilities is a critical but neglected issue in Pakistan. This is the very reason that post-harvest losses are very high: almost 60 per cent in fruits and vegetables and between 20 per cent and 30 per cent in grains in Sindh,” says Syed Nadeem Shah of the Sindh Abadgar Board.
He says farmers are often forced to sell their produce at much lower prices while urban consumers pay a fairly high price of essential food items as middlemen manipulate the market. “Apart from the losses due to weather conditions, the quality of food is also compromised in the process and often infected grain is sold in the market, which is not even fit for animals, let alone for human consumption,” adds Mr Shah.
However, teachers at the Tando Jam Agriculture University put the post-harvest losses of grains between 18 per cent and 60 per cent, mainly due to lack of storage facilities. In fruits and vegetables, they say, the losses stand at between 40 per cent and 45 per cent.
About the wheat storage facilities in Sindh, the board’s representative says some facilities were developed though their locations were not appropriately selected and now they get submerged whenever it rains. “This causes huge losses every year. Only last year, 65,000 bags, each containing 100 kilos of wheat, were destroyed by rain in Hyderabad and Kotri,” he recalls.
Apart from a few small government godowns, Karachi has no big storage house for grains, he says, pointing out that the one in Landhi has been taken over by land mafia.
The silos story
Sanctioned during the government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the project to build 16 grain silos, each with 3,125-ton capacity, near Super Highway finally started off in 1984 in Deh Bijjar Bhutti (now part of Gadap Town) with the federal government’s support. The purpose was to build a state-of-the-art grain storage facility that can boost exports and cater to national emergencies.
The then additional Karachi West allotted 70 acres to the provincial food department of which 11.7 acres were used for the project. Though the main contractor and consultant was M/S Eastern Construction Co (Pvt) Ltd, the sub-contractor, or the actual constructor, was the National Logistic Cell (NLC) which was supposed to complete the project in one year. However, it took the NLC six years to raise 11 out of total 16 silos.
Explaining the reasons why the NLC was not awarded the contract directly and how the delay was caused in the project’s execution, a retired food department official, who was in office during that period, alleges that the company was fake and was awarded the contract to favour some influential people.
“Nobody knows where the company disappeared after the award of the contract. The project was delayed mainly because of lack of interest on part of successive governments, though, the records cited reasons as the change in the project design and delays in payments,” he adds.
Giving a chronology of the events, he says the construction on the project was first suspended in 1985, followed by an extension the same year. The next year, construction was again stopped and then was resumed in 1987. After two years, the work again suspended, but by that time 11 grain silos had been erected.
A visit to the site shows that all the 11 huge, cylindrical structures have remained least affected in rough weathers. Surrounded by a boundary wall, all the silos were to be built parallel to one another and inter-connected with an underground channel for which earth had been dug up. The foundations of the five remaining silos had been laid when the project suspended. Along with a number of unfinished residential quarters, a power station stands locked on the premises.
According to the original design, an entire residential area along with roads and all allied facilities, including a truck terminal, a warehouse of 1,000-ton capacity, weighing machines, workshops, headhouse, hopper, surge bin, godowns, laboratories, an office block, fire control system and weighing bridges were to be set up to handle the bulk storage of grains.
Six locked containers
The most intriguing part, however, are six locked containers at the site. According to food department officials, the containers contain expensive machinery, which was imported from Denmark in 1985 at a cost between Rs6 million and Rs8 million. There are conflicting claims about the condition of the machinery while some officials claim that it has been reduced to junk, others maintain that it is still in good condition.
“There is no record to show that the containers were opened or the site was ever visited by any government official. This abandoned project failed to inspire successive governments, military or otherwise, all of which have an inherent inclination towards lucrative projects. Officials come up with different excuses to get rid of the original plan and utilise the land for a scheme in which they can make money,” says an official of the works and services department.
He adds that the adjoining land is constantly under the threat of a mafia and many attempts have been made to steal the containers. In one such instance that occurred last year, the culprits did succeed in taking a container on a truck at night. Two days later in an operation by the NLC, the container was recovered from Dumba Goth, a nearby locality, where its machinery was being sold as scrap. A man was arrested and an FIR of the case was also registered.
A source says the NLC has been in correspondence with the department over taking the project’s possession since 1996, but the government has showed no interest. “The military organisation’s desperation can be gauged from the fact that it gave up its pending amount of Rs1.226 million in a letter sent to the works and services department in 2006. The same year, the Sindh government referred the case to the chief engineer in Hyderabad who forwarded it to the executive engineer in Karachi,” adds the source.
Present status
The Sindh cabinet’s committee on privatisation approved the sale of silos in 2006, but the plan failed to take off. At a meeting held this year in March, the chief secretary was briefed that the government received a bid of Rs10 million which was far below the reserve price of Rs186 million. The chief secretary directed the officials concerned to visit the site and determine the status of the project and its viability. However, that visit has not been made yet.
When Sindh Food Secretary Ijaz Ali Khan was contacted, he said: “In the light of the chief secretary’s meeting, the officials concerned of the food and works and services departments along with some representatives of the NLC will carry out a visit of the project site next week to determine its status. The delay has been caused primarily because of the many political developments that have emerged in the provinces in the past few months.”
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