Rawalpindi: Pakistan Flour Mills Association Rawalpindi Region has announced to continue the strike until the demands are approved.
The association has put forward 5-point demands under which inspection of flour mills should be carried out as per departmental SOPs while government flour trucking stations should be abolished and sale at shops should be allowed.
It has been demanded that according to the policy, permits should be issued for local 25% and 75% delivery of wheat products.
Apart from this, flour should be removed from the category of essential commodity and there should be no restrictions on the movement of wheat from across Punjab.
read more; The conflict between the Rawalpindi Food Department and flour mill owners intensified
On the other hand, the Food Department has also decided to take action under 3 MPO against the mills involved in the strike. The ongoing tension between the Rawalpindi Food Department and flour mills has raised fears of a flour crisis.
Secretary Food Punjab Zaman Vito says that the supply of flour is continuing uninterruptedly across Punjab while flour is available in abundant quantities at trucking points and shops.
He said that additional quota of flour was supplied on Sunday due to which the flour became surplus, the vast majority of flour mills in the province are submitting challans for tomorrow’s quota.
Secretary Food Punjab said that there is no exception for mills embezzling government wheat, so the Flour Mills Association should withdraw the strike call and stop antagonizing the people. The strike call was a conspiracy to starve the poor people which has failed.
On the other hand, the Rawalpindi Police and the Food Department foiled an attempt to smuggle 18 vehicles loaded with flour. 11 thousand 358 bags of flour, 200 bags of bran and 200 bags of flour were recovered and 18 drivers were arrested.
Naseerabad police arrested 13 drivers Umar Akhtar, Arshad, Ismail, Nazir, Syed Zareen, Syeda, Rahat, Mohammad Nabi, Sanaullah, Ajmal, Sahibzada, Ajmal Khan and Rafiullah and recovered 6637 bags of flour.
Sadrwah police recovered 200 bags of bran and 200 bags of flour from the driver Gul Rahim. Mandira police arrested 04 drivers Abdul Ghaffar, Sulaiman, Ahmed Nawaz and Gul Badshah and recovered 4724 bags of flour.
Action will be taken against illegal suppliers of flour, wheat and flour.
(function(d, s, id){
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3&appId=770767426360150”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.7”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));