Huge quantity of sugar going waste in warehouses

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

LAHORE - Hundreds tons of sugar, purchased and stocked by the provincial government in the warehouses of the city, is expiring because the sugar dealers and the retailers are not ready to buy the imported sweetener, which may cause a financial loss of billions of rupees to the government, insiders informed TheNation on Thursday.
They further said the district administration was forcing the retailers to purchase such imported sugar at Rs 68.50 per kilogram instead of purchasing local sugar which was now available in markets in abundance at Rs 72 per kg.
They informed this scribe the district administration had directed all the price magistrates and enforcement inspectors to force the shopkeepers to buy imported sugar from the stock of government whereas, the retailers seemed reluctant to purchase such sugar of government and they even were not willing to purchase it at Rs 50 per kg because of its lessening consumption in the market.
While giving details, the sources further informed the Punjab government had purchased a huge quantity of sugar from the federal government during sugar crisis across the province particularly in the provincial metropolis a couple of weeks ago and stocked such imported sugar in the government warehouses from where the government was supplying sugar to the city markets.
Moreover, the district administration also compelled to stock a huge quantity of such sugar in the Pakistan Railways' warehouse situated at Mughalpura Dry Port due to jam packed warehouses of provincial food department and city district government, they said, adding a huge quantity of sugar was still packed in the bogies of trains and could not be deloaded and kept in the above said warehouse because there was no space for this purpose.