THE media reports said that the Food Ministry has imported two lakh tonnes of rotten wheat from Brazil at a cost of Tk 400 crore and Food Minister Qamrul Islam told the Parliament that the government would destroy the imported wheat after further laboratory test of their quality. He said that the government has received supply of one lakh tonnes and order of the remaining one lakh tonnes of wheat has already been cancelled. But another news report said payments for wheat were already made up to 90 percent and one Netherlands based supplier and another Singapore-based supplier have supplied the wheat in separate consignments of 1.5 lakh tonnes and 50,000 tonnes respectively.
Thus the Minister’s disclosures remain conflicting with the media reports. If the payments were already made for 90 percent supply, there is no credibility to cancellation of the remaining supply. The Minister told the Parliament that the government would not import poor quality wheat but it is already in government custody and shifted to government godowns in 15 to 16 districts. It was quickly dispatched on arrival for use in test relief and Food for Work Programmes. Some wheat were also milled into atta and distributed to police, Ansars and BGB for consumption as their ration.
The import of rotten wheat came to the light when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina showed the sample of some wheat after a Cabinet meeting last week expressing displeasure and asking for a probe. But it is evident that the Food Ministry is yet to set up such a probe committee while making the Director General (DG) of the Directorate of Food as a scape-goat shelving him as OSD apparently passing all blames on him. The Food Minister said it is sad that poor quality rotten wheat has been imported but again claimed they have received the supply on test of the quality of wheat by Food Department Laboratories. He said the wheat would be tested again at Science Laboratory facilities and other laboratories taking samples from district godowns and if they proved substandard, they would be destroyed.
Insiders however said different stories. They said the wheat was accepted although the suppliers failed to provide the Crop Year Certificate and the Certificate of Standard and Quality of Wheat, issued either by Brazil’s Agriculture Ministry or Chamber of Commerce. The suppliers provided certificates issued by a pre-shipment inspection company, which is open to question. In fact scandals were following wheat imports for some time. Only two months ago, a move to import certain amount of Ukrainian wheat was shelved for scandals behind it. The import of rotten Brazilian wheat followed that bid.
People believe that certain quarters in the Food Ministry is involved in the scandal and the Minister’s defensive statement smell something rotten in it. The government procurement is the most protected area of minting illegal money and the incident in hand appears not an exception either.
