HYDERABAD, Jan 10: Mismanagement and malpractices on part of chakki owners and the officials of Food Department, which had up till now failed to regulate a large number of chakkis, led to the severest flour crisis in the district, like the rest of the country, had seen in the wake of assassination of Benazir Bhutto on Dec 27, Dawn learnt on Thursday.

Hyderabad has been witnessing wheat or flour crisis off and on since May last year when the prices of a wheat bag rose steeply. The crisis worsened during the last quarter of 2007 when prices once again shot up to Rs30 to Rs35 per kg.

By the time district government moved into action people were forced to pay Rs24 to Rs30 for a kilogramme of flour. The district government imposed fines on chakki owners and retailers for charging more than the officially fixed prices of Rs16.50 (chakki’s flour) and Rs16 of roller mills and it did improve the situation but still there were widespread complaints that people were forced to purchase flour for Rs30 per kg.

The Hyderabad Region deputy director of food Lal Khan Jatoi said that the department had raised wheat quota for chakkis by 10 per cent.

“Now we are providing 47,590 wheat bags of 100 kg each for a fortnight to 187 chakkis of the district. Their quota was earlier restricted to a week,” he said. Roller flour mills were now getting 51,690 wheat bags for 15-days grinding,” he added.

People normally prefer chakki flour, which was purer and more nutritious than the flour of roller mills that extracted superfine flour from the grain. The roller mills were bound to extract only 10 per cent fine flour from 100 kg of wheat but normally they did not follow the rule and the resultant flour lacked required nourishment.

Inquiries revealed that not all the chakkis were operational and some owners even sold their wheat quota to others without grinding. Around half a dozen chakkis were not operational hence their wheat quota lapsed and kept accumulating in godowns.

Mr Jatoi agreed that in addition to the 187 chakkis there were many other chakkis that bought wheat from open market and thus their rates varied from others. “We are selling flour at official rates of Rs16.50 per kg while the price of flour purchased from open market is somewhere between Rs22 and Rs24 per kg,” said a retailer.

Official figures put wheat stock of Food Department at 185,820 wheat bags of 100 kg i.e. 18,582,000 kilogrammes besides the consignment of 38,000 metric tones for Hyderabad, which was still in the pipeline.

The district government was planning to obtain figures of grinding of allocated wheat quota from each chakki owner after reports indicating that hardly 50 to 60 chakki owners were maintaining record.

Food officials normally avoided to ensure the record while wheat and flour were transported to other districts. “We have made it binding on chakki owners under a mechanism to sell 30 per cent of their flour to buyers and 70 per cent to each retailer and maintain record in detail,” said District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil.

He said that the vigilance team initially distributed flour bags to retailers and then at union council level. Flour centres were also established where the staple food item was available at officially fixed rate, he said.

The Atta Chakki Owners Association representative Haji Nawab called for ban on the movement of wheat and flour from Hyderabad to other districts under sections 144 Cr.PC.

“But we will also raise our rates as Sindh government has allowed raise for ex-mill rate of flour”.