THE Food Ministry last year purchased rotten wheat from Brazil and France, among four countries, and rice from India despite our bumper rice production. And now the Ministry is seeking approval of the government’s policy makers to clear out bumpy warehouse stocks by selling food grains at low cost in the market, as per a report in The New Nation on Wednesday. In the process the nation has already lost Tk 800 crore paying the importer bill of rotten wheat and what more wait in the store is yet out of the sight.
The Food Ministry has slashed both the government exchequer and farmers’ fate by the two-edge sword -corruption by name. The apex court, Jatiya Sangsad Standing Committee, ruling-party MPs, citizens’ groups decried the import of rotten wheat but they did not stop. Meanwhile, Police and Ansar had eaten much of the rotten stock while concerns about public health were totally ignored. Many wonder how the Food Directorate was able to pay Tk 800 crore to the dishonest importer when such payment was held on check.
It is more surprising that the Food Minister does not know about this payment as he claims. Who then runs the Ministry if he had not imported the rotten wheat and now he is equally unaware of the payment of the huge bills; how come it while he is blaming some scapegoats in the Food Directorate for the gross irregularities. Nobody will agree to such claim except to be reassured that the Minister is sitting in the center of all such scandals misusing the government fund collected from taxpayers’ money. It is no more secret that many socio-political bodies and citizens’ groups had earlier demanded the resignation of the Minister and they are again feeling bitter. In our view the Minister must resign to save the government from being equally blamed for high corruption in his Ministry.
What appears quite unacceptable to the nation is that when the Food Minister bought rice and wheat, it was justified for distribution under social safety net programme. But to utter disbelief MPs are now demanding cash instead of food grains for distribution to the poor to support local development work. People are not fool as they believe them to be fool but things are moving unchanged.
Earlier, Food Department bought wheat at Tk 28 per kg while the market price was Tk 20 per kg and now they plan to sell it at Tk 13 per kg; no matter what the nation stands to lose from it. What appears highly disturbing is that the government’s local food procurement and import policies are not anyway properly demand based but to fulfil the demand of the corrupt people in and around the Ministry to make overnight fortune.
