QUETTA: Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti on Friday chaired a high-level review meeting of the Food Department at the Chief Minister’s Secretariat.
In the meeting, the wheat procurement policy and plan 2024 was reviewed and in the light of the decision of the Balochistan cabinet, it was decided to start the wheat procurement process from next week.
The meeting was informed that at present the Food Department has 58000 thousand bags of grain which were left over from last year’s distribution.
According to the decision of the cabinet, the tendering process has been started for the purchase of new bags as per the requirements of this year, the available bags of wheat will be distributed equally among all the districts, said in the meeting.
Finance Secretary informed the meeting that 13.9 million rupees would be released today for the purchase of new bags of wheat while half of the five billion rupees approved for wheat purchase to be released on Monday and half this month itself so that the
re was no hindrance in the process of wheat purchase.
The meeting was informed that according to the decision of the Balochistan Cabinet, 0.5 million metric tons of wheat would be purchased from the farmers this year, the procurement arrangements have been finalized.
Addressing at the meeting, Balochistan Chief Minister Mir Sarfraz Bugti said that the provincial government has plenty of wheat reserves while the cabinet has decided to purchase another 0.5 million metric tonnes of wheat from the farmers.
He said that we wanted to provide relief to the farmers while our effort was to ensure that the benefits of agricultural production go directly to the farmers instead of middlemen and benefit the people associated with the agricultural sector.
The CM said that due to the bad deeds of the past, the officers of the Food Department were reluctant to carry out the normal Departmental affairs, because of which, most of the departmental affairs including wheat procurement remain at a standstill, but now we have
determined that we would bring transparency by removing the scandals from the Food Department.
He said that public confidence could be restored by cleaning the stain of corruption from this department.
Chief Minister directed that the work on the framework agreement for the next year should be started from now so that all the issues could be dealt with in time and the farmers would not face any difficulties due to the delay.
Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said that by mobilizing the Food Department, its reputation has to be restored, if irregularities were discouraged at all levels, things would improve to a large extent.
He also directed that sufficient measures should be taken to protect the stocks of wheat purchased at the government level from rains, floods and other natural calamities and proper storage arrangements should be ensured.
Provincial Food Minister Noor Muhammad Dummar, Mir Tariq Magsi, Chief Secretary Balochistan Shakeel Qadir Khan, Principal Secretary Imran Zarkoon, Secretary Food Asghar Harifal, S
pecial Secretary Asfandyar Baloch and related officials attended the meeting.