Sugar mafia and leaders’ miligenance

Sugar price spiked to a record high across the nation while it surged to over Rs 230 per kg in retail markets of Balochistan. The prices got a straight jump of Rs. 20 after cargo trucks halted at the Sindh-Balochistan border due ban on inter-province transportation of commodity.

A sudden sugar crisis emerged in the country in recent days, after the PDM government relinquished office and the Kakar-led interim setup took the ruins of the government about two weeks ago. The ministry claims that the country has over 2 million metric tons of sugar which is sufficient stock to fulfil domestic needs til December, while the government has ordered the import of sugar from Brazil or any other nation that can supply dearly needed commodities on an urgent basis. Meanwhile, the poor masses suffer another shock at the hands of their rulers amid an ever-growing brunt of inflation, overbilling and unscheduled electricity load shedding that turned the nation not less than havoc.

There are contradictory claims by the previous rulers and the bureaucrats sitting in the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Commerce and Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) that deals in imports/ exports of the country with the rest of the world. Mr. Dar claimed to have sufficient sugar in government stocks and termed the current crisis a result of dishonest business practices, hoarding, and overpricing by the traders along with the malignancy of the top bureaucracy and powerful sugar mafia for the sole purpose of illegal money generation. Dar criticized the PPP-led Ministry of Commerce for exporting the bulk of sugar before the start of the crushing season that led the nation to this crisis. The interim government mulls importing costly sugar from other countries to resolve the problem after the previous rulers created havoc by exporting homegrown cheap cane sugar.

Interestingly, this was not the first time that such kind of blunder had been staged by the trio-nexus of leaders, bureaucrats and cartel through a pre-planned game of export/imports and price hikes which cost billions of dollars to national exchequer along with pickpocketing hard-earned money from the public. Such episodes had been staged multiple times in the past, however, no self-claimed public leader or Khadim of the nation could neither prevent this fiasco nor expose the faces of the crooks/ criminals to the nation.