SULAIMANI, Kurdistan Region—Local officials and business owners in Sulaimani believe that the federal government has supplied expired and bad quality wheat to the province’s mills and bakeries.
“We found out that one of the mills was using a type of wheat that was supplied by Baghdad and rated as top quality,” Ramazan Namiq of Sulaimani provincial agricultural commission told Rudaw. “But we realized that it wasn’t even second or third rate.”
“It failed our inspections altogether.” Name added.
According to Namiq the wheat had originally come from Kirkuk’s main silos. He believes that the supply has been tampered with on the way to the Kurdistan Region.
“We’ve information that a lot of dirt has been mixed with the wheat in order to increase the weight.” Namiq claimed.
Awder Rahman, a baker in Sulaimani said they have no use for government-supplied flour due to its bad quality.
“We buy our own Turkish flour,” Rahman told Rudaw. “The subsidized flour is only used to put on top of the other flour to keep it from drying.”
In Iraq the government subsidizes flour, rice and certain other items to people. However, there have long been complaints of low quality food supplies under the ration card program.
For her part, Nasrin Muhammad, head of the Sulaimani department of grains admitted that the wheat supplied by the central government was of low quality, but added that it had passed health inspections.
“From a health perspective it has no issues at all, but it isn’t good for making bread.” Muhammad said. “I also assure everyone that good quality Australian wheat has been bought and is on the way and once it arrives we’ll mix it with our own wheat and produce a high quality flour.
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