LAHORE: Irked by food department raids, flour millers have sought intervention by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and caretaker Chief Minister Mohsin Naqvi to `save Punjab from the impending flour crisis`.

Pakistan Flour Mills Association (PFMA) Punjab chapter chairman Chaudhry Iftikhar Muttoo says a crisis of wheat and its by-products is emerging in the province due to `wrong` policies of the food department.

He alleges in a statement here on Tuesday that food department officials are seizing wheat stocks lying on flour mills premises in Gujranwalaand other districts, though these stocks have been declared to the authorities concerned as per rules.

He claims that the volume of the seized stocks was well within the limits accepted by the food authorities, but still the stocks were being impounded by the raiding teams of the food department, which also `harassed` the mills` management.

He says the `coercive` policy is encouraging the private unregistered players to enter the market and hoard the wheat crop being harvested by the farmers these days.

He fears if the trend continues, most of the 27.7 million tonnes of wheat produced by the farmers will land in the undeclared storage facilitiesowned by unscrupulous elements instead of going to the government and flour mills.

The unregistered players, he says, will mint money at the cost of poor consumers asgrainratesin the open market have shot up to Rs5,300 per 40 kg, though harvesting of the new crop is going on.

Mr Muttoo demands that the flour mills sealed in Gujranwala and other districts should be desealed immediately and all millers be allowed to purchase the wheat from the open market as per their legal and constitutional right.

Otherwise, he cautions, the province and the country will face a flour crisis when the industry will stop its operations because ofshortage ofthe raw material (wheat).