This move as elaborated by Salahuddin Haider, Information Advisor to the Sindh Chief Minister, at a news briefing on the decisions of the Provincial Cabinet on this vital issue at its meeting on Wednesday (July 28).
According to him, taking serious note of the depleting wheat stock, the provincial government intends to take all precautionary measures to deal with any emergency arising out of this predicament with a view to saving the people from facing hardship.
The option of importing wheat directly, he pointed out, forms part of a plan comprising varied measures to deal effectively with the unfolding situation.
Referring to the Sindh government's resolve of not allowing shortage of wheat or any other commodity, he also pointed to the Cabinet's directive to the food department to ensure release of wheat to the flour mills from the available stock, while simultaneously checking their stock position in order to keep prices under control.
As for the other measures adopted by the Cabinet toward that end, mention may be made of the decision to cancel no-limit licences earlier issued to the flour mills and to determine limits for such releases.
This change, as Salahuddin explained, is aimed at rationalising and ensuring availability of wheat to all the flour mills, as also helping equitable distribution of atta in all parts of the province.
Viewed in their entirety, these measures will certainly inspire hope anew among the people understandably hard hit by the persisting shortage of wheat and atta and their rising prices, notwithstanding earlier official strategies and programmes to avert such an eventuality.
Many and varied have been the measures, adopted from time to time, to deal with the lingering problem, but proving of little avail in practical terms. Now the situation seems to have really gone out of hand, particularly in Sindh and other smaller provinces, leading to the federal government's resort to expeditious and larger imports of the grain as the only means to assuage the people's sufferings.
Taking a serious view of the worsening wheat crisis in the country, Prime Minister Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, among other measures, had deemed it expedient, early this month, to ask the Punjab government to lift its re-imposed ban on inter-provincial movement of the commodity, evidently to help the severely deficient provinces.
That directive even when followed by a reminder, proved ineffective, thereby leading to anxiety in other provinces, particularly the NWFP, which has been desperately pursuing the case for immediate withdrawal of Punjab's restrictive stance.
In so far as the Punjab's reluctance is concerned, it has been attributed to its concern for building a reserve for the province to ensure smooth supplies in the event of future shortage.
The Sindh government's initiative for direct wheat import was formulated on the eve of a meeting in Islamabad to deliberate upon the ban issue, indicates its understandable anxiety to do what it can on its own to avert what could turn into a disaster for the people of this province.
All this put together should point to the urgent need of revitalising the nation's wheat economy and devising an all-time policy to ensure equitable distribution of what is the staple food of the majority of the people.