HARIPUR, May 17: The Food authorities here on Saturday slashed the wheat quota of all Haripur-based flour mills by 50 per cent creating the fear of shortage of atta in the market once again.

However, official sources brushed aside the impression of shortage of atta, adding that the cut in the wheat quota would not affect the supply of the commodity as the local produce of wheat has started pouring in the market.

Sources at the office of district food controller, Haripur said that they were asked through a faxed message by the office of director Food, NWFP to make a cut in the quota of daily supply of wheat to all the flour mills of Haripur district with immediate effect.

“We had to follow the directives of the high ups by reducing the quota of mills,” said Imtiaz Khan, assistant food controller, Haripur, while confirming the reduction in the wheat quota.

He said that prior to this decision, each flour mill was getting 14 tonnes or 145 bags of 100-kg wheat on a daily basis, which has been, following the order of director Food, reduced to 72 bags or seven tonnes.

To a question, Mr Khan said that the reduction of wheat quota to mills would have obviously affect the availability of atta to the market, but as the harvesting of local wheat was about to finish and the millers were purchasing the commodity directly from the farmers, the local population would hopefully not face the problem of shortage of flour.

He told that following the reduction of quota, the stock of wheat in the food go downs would be enough for next thirty days.

About the monthly quota of wheat for the Haripur go downs, he said that according to a decision of the Federal Food Committee the district population of over 900,000 was getting 30,000 plus 100-kg bags of wheat monthly, while it was 75,000 bags till 1999.

Terming the present quota insufficient for the growing population, Mr Khan suggested that the dependence of Haripur on the flour of Punjab could only be put to an end once the present quota is increased to 100,000 bags per month.

The assistant food controller said that the reason behind fixation of per bag rate of wheat flour was that it was not being done for the last several years owing to the reason that mills were not getting their due share and the miller purchase wheat from Punjab and sell the commodity at their own rates.

He said that there were 23 flour mills in the limits of Haripur, but only 11 were operating because of the shortage of supply of wheat quota.

Meanwhile, the district coordination officer, Haripur has following the reports of smuggling of wheat to other districts from Haripur, banned the export of wheat and wheat flour out of the district imposing Section 144 for a period of one month.

It may be recalled that during the previous Rabi season wheat was grown on 32,653 hectares of unirrigated area and 4,595 hectares of irrigated area and the per acre yield was received at the rate of 24.814 metric tonnes from irrigated and 14.09 metric tonnes from unirrigated areas, while for the year 2007-08 about 4,615 and 32,670 hectares of irrigated and unirrigated area was respectively brought under wheat crop from where the yield was estimated as 10,600 metric tonnes from irrigated areas and 43,097 metric tonnes from unirrigated area.