‘Who is stealing our chickens and wheat,’ asks Pakistan senator amid ongoing food crisis

Pakistan's unprecedented crisis of food, stemming from years of economic mismanagement amid country's support for cross-border terrorism, was debated in Islamabad's senate on Friday. Country's opposition leaders targeted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif-led coalition and held the federal government responsible for the country's ongoing shortage of wheat. 

Pakistan's federal food minister Tariq Bashir Cheema blamed individual provinces for the massive hike in the price of wheat flour, which opposition leaders claimed was Islamabad's operative method of denying federal responsibility for the ongoing crisis.

The federal food minister alleged that policies of provincial administrations in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, led by former Prime Minister Imran Khan's 'Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf' party, gave way to the widely reported visuals of long queues outside the government-operated stores that sell flour among other essential food staples.

The visuals of Pakistani citizens scrambling to secure supply of wheat flour for themselves have gone viral on social media in recent days. 

The latest visuals coming from India's impoverished northwestern neighbour show people pushing and shoving each other to hold on to a bag of wheat flour.

Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, president of Jamaat-e-Islami Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, quoted the statistics of the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, adding that the price of a 20kg wheat flour bag was Rs 3,300 whereas live chicken was being sold at a price of Rs 390/kg as of January 6. He asked government if the country has enough stocks, why they aren't reaching the people. 

"I am surprised that enough wheat is available in the silos but who is stealing the flour and chicken; who is stealing the dollars," he said.

The senator further alleged that the wheat was being smuggled into Afghanistan. 

"Who is smuggling flour to Afghanistan," Senator Mushtaq Ahmed questioned.

"The hoarders and flour smugglers are sitting in parliament," he added. 

Senator Robina Khalid of People's Party of Pakistan, the party of country's foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, said that people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province remain terribly affected by the ongoing food crisis. 

"It is unfortunate that there was a huge difference in prices of the commodity," she said. 

She said that the people could "live without gas and electricity, but not without flour," The Dawn reported. 

Meanwhile, Pakistan's federal government has clarified that the country has spent Rs $4.6 billion on the import of edible oil and $2 billion on wheat. The federal food minister has asked provincial governments to expand measures to increase cultivation area for edible oil and wheat.

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