Lahore : The Punjab government’s plan to buy wheat through procurement companies is turning into a nightmare for the growers as they are being forced to sell grain at much lower rates than the open market.

As an experiment , this year the Punjab government has introduced a concept of the procurement companies to buy wheat from the growers.

has introduced a new model to deprieve the growers from the market price of their wheat grain. This time a model of buying wheat through procurement companies has been brought in by the Punjab government. The entire plan of wheat procurement companies is meant to give an opportunity to a select group of blue-eyed and some like-minded millers to buy wheat , stock the grains at the official godowns in free and again sell the same produce to the government department at higher rates. This entire exercise is a part of well-thought and implemented fraud to make hundreds of billions at the cost of the growers toil.

In the first week of May when wheat harvesting is yet to complete in some areas of the Punjab and the government departments are yet to have statistics of actual wheat crop production , the Punjab Food Department has launched crackdown against the mills who purchased wheat directly from the growers.

Industry sources said three flour Mills in Lahore were raided on Tuesday and their stocks, which were bought from the open market , were seized and taken away by the Food Department of the Punjab. The only crime of the mills whose stocks were seized and confiscated was to buy wheat from the growers.

The mills are buying wheat from the growers at Rs 3800 to Rs 3900 against the official buying rate of Rs 3500 per 40 kg. The Punjab Food Department is forcing the growers to sell their produce to the wheat procurement companies approved by the provincial government . The entire concept of wheat procurement companies is to make money through forced wheat buying and give windfall profit to selected mill owners.