'Wheat worth billions of rupees damaged in flash floods'

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) has claimed that the flash floods triggered by heavy rains have damaged wheat worth billions of rupees across the country, ARY News reported on Wednesday.

According to details, the PASSCO revealed the statistics during the meeting of National Assembly Standing Committee on National Food Security, held under the chairmanship of Rao Muhammad Ajmal.

During the meeting, the Ministry of Commerce briefed the committee regarding the availability of fertilizers.

The ministry informed that 0.2 million metric tons of DAP fertilizer was being imported from China, while 0.3 million tons of DAP fertilizer is being procured from Iran in exchange of rice. It assured that the country would not face shortage of fertilizer as measures have been taken on time.

Speaking on the occasion, NA Standing Committee Chairman Rao Muhammad Ajmal said that the wheat cultivation area will be reduced by 20 percent while flood water in Sindh will be receded in two months.

Meanwhile, Managing Director (MD) PASSCO briefed the meeting that the corporation’s three zones out of 15 have been severely affected by floods.

“Wheat worth Rs4 billion was damaged in Dera Allah Yar, Khairpur and Hyderabad,” he said. The official added that some PASSCO centres were still submerged under two to five feet of water.

It is pertinent to mention here that tens of millions of people across swathes of Pakistan were battling the worst monsoon floods in a decade, with countless homes washed away, vital farmland destroyed, and the country’s main river threatening to burst its banks.

Officials say 1,061 people have died since June when the seasonal rains began, but the final toll could be higher as hundreds of villages in the mountainous north have been cut off after flood-swollen rivers washed away roads and bridges.