PESHAWAR: The All Pakistan Flour Mills Association on Monday complained of ban on wheat movement from Punjab to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and threatened it would forcibly stop wheat export to Afghanistan if the ban was not lifted within a week.

APFMA, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chairman Anees Ashraf told a news conference at PeshawarPress Club that the Punjab government had banned wheat supply to his province for one month causing all local flourmills totaling 300 to stop working.

`We have fixed one week deadline for resumption of wheat supply to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa flourmills. If the demand is not met, we will block wheat export to Afghanistan via Peshawar,` he said.

He said the ban violated the Article 151 of the Constitution and was an attempt to pit both provinces against each other.

Mr Ashraf said the millers were forced to close their industries due to unavailability of suf-ficient wheat stock.

He said if the ban was not lifted immediately, flour price would go up by Rs4 per kilogrammes in Peshawar during the next four months.

Flanked by other office-bearers of the association including Haji Musarrat Shah, Momin Khan, Sartaj Khan, Ghani Khattak and Malik Iftikhar, the APFMA chairman said by restricting wheat supply to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Punjab government had controlled rates of the grain in Punjab.

He said wheat export from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to Afghanistan had substantiallydeclined after sharp increase in flour prices in the province.

`Afghan importers are directly purchasing wheat from Punjab causing huge financial losses to our flourmills and the government,` he said.

The APFMA chairman said the wheat procurement target would be unachievable due to ban on wheat supply from Punjab.

Another miller Malik Iftikhar said the Punjab food department would achieve its procurement target of 40 million tons wheat in the province and even the wheat would not be supplied to local market during wheat purchase.

He said the KhyberPakhtunkhwa flour millers had one option and that was to procure wheat from the locals at rates fixed by them on their own.

`In that situation, it could be difficult to run flour industries in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. It will also cause flour rates to go up for consumers,` he said.

When asked about the total requirement of wheat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Mr Iftikhar said there were 30-35 million tons of wheat shortage, which was being met by procurement from Pasco.

He expressed the fear that if the ban continued, then it would cause increase in flour rates manifolds in KhyberPakhtunkhwa and decline export to Afghanistan.

`We`d attached great expectations to the PML-N government in the centre that it would compensate our militancy-hit province but instead, it has complicated the issue stopping the entire industries from working,` he said.

Mr Iftikhar asked the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to effectively take up the matter with the federal government to overcome the millers` problems and warned if that didn`t happen, then meeting the requirement of wheat after four months would not be possible.