KARACHI:Sindh Minister for Information, Archives and Labor Saeed Ghani has said that Sindh cabinet has decided to impose penalties on the flour mills’ owners who take quota from Sindh government but do not run their mills.
The provincial minister told media here Thursday that the cabinet decided that not only the strict action would be taken against all such mill owners but also the subsidy given to them would be withdrawn.
According to the minister the provincial cabinet was told that the price of a wheat bag in the market was Rs 5,000, while the Sindh government was giving it to flour mills at Rs 3,000 after subsidy. He said that according to the cabinet’s decision, the mill owners would now have to prove by showing their electricity bills that they had run their mills.
Saeed Ghani said that the cabinet was informed that there were 64 flour mills in Ghotki, Sukkur and Khairpur out of which 21 had chosen the option of plea bargain and already returned Rs2billion after plea bargain, out of which the Sindh government had received only 200 million rupees so far. The National Accountability Bureau would be contacted to get all this money it received by the plea bargain.
The cabinet also decided that no qouta would be given to the flour mills who had either plea bargained or were defaulters or non-functional, the minister added. However, all those flour mills that had defaulted would be considered for giving fresh wheat quota only if they returned their defaulted amounts within15 days.