LAHORE:Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvez Elahi on Friday announced giving 21,000 metric tons of wheat to Balochistan to help meet its food needs.
While chairing a meeting of the provincial cabinet committee on wheat at his office here, he said that Balochistan had requested the Punjab government to provide 10,000MT wheat and the government decided to give it 21,000 metric tons of wheat, which was more than what was asked for, he said.
Punjab would go all out to meet the food needs of other provinces, he said and added that zero-tolerance policy would be implemented against the wheat hoarding mafia. To stop smuggling of wheat, additional police force would be deployed at all exit routes, he said and directed the IG police and ACS (Home) to implement the integrated plan for strict monitoring of the exit points of the province.
The meeting also deliberated on a proposal of supplying wheat to the ‘chakki’ owners at the government level, while the food secretary briefed the meeting about wheat reserves and flour prices. It was noted that 1541 cases were registered and Rs 39 million fine was imposed on the accused on the charges of wheat smuggling. The number of flour sale points had also been increased from 1,059 to supply subsidized flour, he added.
Provincial Ministers Sardar Hasnain Bahadur Dreshak, Syed Hussain Jahanian Gardezi, Chief Secretary Abdullah Sumbal, Principal Secretary Muhammad Khan Bhatti, former principal secretary GM Sikandar, former BoP president Hamesh Khan, economist Muhammad Sajid, Secretary Agriculture Ahmad Aziz Tarar, Director Food Shozeb Saeed and others attended the meeting.