700 selling points for subsidised wheat flour publicised through newspapers: Sharjeel

karachi: As part of its relief measures, the Sindh government has designated 700 different selling points in the province to provide wheat flour to the destitute people at a subsidised rate of Rs65 per kilogramme.

Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon said this on Wednesday as he addressed a press conference along with other provincial cabinet members Syed Nasir Hussain Shah and Mukesh Kumar Chawla. The provincial ministers said that rehabilitation of millions of flood victims in the province was the government’s foremost priority as this was no time to do politics.

They maintained that the entire leadership of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), including the Sindh chief minister, his cabinet members, and lawmakers of the party, had been fully concentrating on the cause of providing speedy relief to the flood victims in the province.

Memon said the provincial government had established makeshift stalls, shops and mobile sales units for the provision of flour at discounted rates. The Sindh government had asked the deputy commissioners and assistant commissioners to make sure that no one was able to misuse the facility of subsidised flour by bulk purchasing the essential food item, he added.

He explained that all the major newspapers had published the list of the 700 designated selling points of wheat flour and their contact numbers to help out the concerned citizens. Chawla, the food minister, told the media that the provincial government had been providing a subsidy of Rs25 billion to ensure the availability of wheat flour at discounted rates.

He said that discounted wheat flour had been available at up to 80 per cent of the designated selling points while the essential food item would be available at the rest of the facilities in the next few days.

He maintained that the Sindh government had provided 25,000 bags of wheat flour at discounted rates for Karachi as they were readily sold on the first day of the sale within a few hours. He said that 800,000 bags of wheat flour were required on a daily basis, including 400,000 bags for Karachi alone, for providing the essential food product to the deserving people at subsidised rates.

The food minister said that after establishing makeshift selling points, the price of wheat flour in the retail market would also be decreased. He vowed that the mills providing substandard flour would be blacklisted and their government quota would be stopped.

He said that for the first time, the government was ensuring the availability of subsidised flour even at big superstores because people from all the economic classes visited such stores.