Govt tells importer substandard wheat won’t be unloaded

The food directorate on Thursday officially informed Impex Consultants Limited that the wheat it imported from Brazil and carried by hip Cyprus ship MV Pintail would not be offloaded, as it was substandard and unsafe for human consumption.
The wheat, imported from France and carried by MV Pintail to Mongla Port on October 12, was proved to be of low quality in laboratory tests at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute in Gazipur.
The decision was also conveyed to the supplier, Glancore Grain BV of France, said Ekramul Huq, a member a committee formed for the monitoring of the unloading of the wheat.
Khulna regional controller of food Kazi Nurul Islam, confirmed that the substandard wheat would not be offloaded from the ship anchored at Harbaria in the Bay, a few kilometres from Mongla Port.
Food and port officials said that MV Pintail arrived at Chittagong port in the last week of May carrying 52,500 tonnes of wheat imported by the food department through Impex Consultants Limited. The ship stayed at the outer anchorage of Chittagong port as the government had declined to offload the wheat rejecting it for being substandard, a number of officials said.
Later, the importer Impex Consultants Limited managed to offload 31,500 tonne wheat from the ship at Chittagong port, they said, adding that with the remaining 21,000 tonnes, the ship entered Mongla port on October 12.
There is a guideline from the government that 60 per cent of the imported foodgrains must be offloaded at Chittagong port while remaining 40 per cent at Mongla port.
On October 13, the eight-member monitoring committee collected samples of the wheat and sent to Dhaka for lab tests and the wheat wwre tested to be substandard and unsafe for human consumption, said Nazrul.
He said the quality of the wheat carried did not match the specifications set out in the tender, he said.
Officials concerned said that a move was on to blacklist the importer, Impex Consultant Limited.

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