Denying his involvement in bad wheat import from Brazil, Food Minister Qamrul Islam on Tuesday said it was the Directorate General of Food that did everything.
“The Food Directorate floated the tender … subsequently it paid the bills. It does everything….the ministry does nothing. Even the Food Minister doesn’t check the final bills,” he said replying to a supplementary question from Jatiya Party MP Pir Fazlur Rahman (Sunamganj-4).
Criticizing the media, he said some newspapers ran ‘baseless and distorted’ news about the wheat import. “Some newspapers carried news stating that the wheat is rotten and not edible…we see no base of the news… the picture published by newspapers is not of our wheat,” he said. Qamrul said, the newspapers say it is substandard. “But it has been proven in laboratory tests that the wheat is edible. Brazilian wheat usually looks bad and no one like it. But it’s standard one.”
The Food Minister said many say the wheat has been infected by insects. “It is natural if any food grain is kept stored for a long time without medicine, these may be infected by insects.” He said, a newspaper published a distorted picture of mine though the Food Directorate imported the wheat. Referring to BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia’s remark on the wheat import, Qamrul said, “Begum Khaleda Zia wants to make it an issue.” He said two lakh metric tonnes of wheat was imported. Of the amount, 1,74,926 metric tonnes have already been distributed and only 25 metric tonnes now remain in store.
“But no bad news was found during the four-month distribution,” the minister said.
