Gilgit: A serious shortage of wheat is intensifying in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), exhausting the reserve actions of the region and increasing the fears of a food crisis after the federal government could not release subsidized supplies more than two weeks in the new fiscal year, said the Food Department of GB.
Food department officials said wheat stocks have been completely exhausted.
GB residents almost completely trust the subsidized wheat supplied annually by the federal government.
While the Federal Government assigned RS20 billion in its budget to acquire more than 170,000 tons of wheat for Gilgit-Baltist for the current fiscal year, the authorities said that a single bag has not been delivered.
The delay is to exert immense pressure on the locals that say they cannot afford to buy flour in the open market.
The authorities say that it is not a single bag delivered, although the federal government assigned RS20BN for the purpose of the budget
“Local people make their monthly expenses budgets according to the subsidized rate,” said Imtiaz Hussain, a local resident, to Sunrise. “The current shortage is causing problems.”
Hussain said the community faces a significant difficulty and demanded that “the federal government release subsidized wheat without further delay.”
The situation has worsened by recent sudden floods and torrential rains, which have severely damaged road infrastructure and have made the transport of products to remote areas extremely difficult.
A food department official said Sunrise that the last actions of the small reserve were distributed during recent floods and now they have left.
He noted that frequent land landslides on the Karakoram road, the Baltistan road and other key routes have severely interrupted supply chains.
The transport of goods from the stores of the Corporation for Storage and Agricultural Services of Pakistan (Passco) in Islamabad to GB can now take several weeks, said the official.
The delivery of the remaining limited wheat of the regional warehouses in Gilgit to remote areas also remains delayed due to blocked roads.
Officials fear that any additional delay in supplies can submerge GB in a large -scale food emergency.
Posted in Dawn, July 20, 2025
