The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa caretaker government announced a Rs19.77 billion flour subsidy scheme to provide free wheat flour for 92 per cent population of the province during the holy month of Ramadan. Addressing a news conference in Peshawar, Caretaker minister for food Fazal Elahi told that like the federal government, the provincial government would provide subsidized wheat flour to the people during the month of fasting and over 5m families to get three 10kg bags each He added “We are launching the programme to help alleviate the misery of the people badly hit by inflation,” he said.

He said that KP needed 5.1 million tons of wheat but it produced 1.3 million tons. The minister said that the government required 247,500 tons of wheat. Elahi said that the province had purchased 1.2 million tons of wheat through the Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco).

He said that the caretaker government had approved Rs19.77 billion flour subsidy for the month of Ramazan. “Our food department will distribute over 17 million bags of 10kg flour in the subsidy scheme,” he said. He said that the flour subsidy would cover 5.7 million households of the province comprising more than 36 million people, who made over 92 per cent of the province’s population.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-INP