Minster of trade complains from the routines, lack of financing and inconsistency of the Iraqi specifications with the International standards
The Iraqi Commission of Integrity had a joint workshop with the ministry of trade, headed by the CoI commissioner Judge Allaa Jwad Hameed and his deputy besides other specialized staffs in the commission, for the ministry of trade, the workshop was attainted by the minister of trade Mr. Khair Alla Hassan Ba Baker and other officials in the ministry of trade to discuss the questionnaire done by the prevention department in the commission to make a survey study on the food staff basket in order to activate the preventive measures in the public service performance as well as to determine obstacles and the proper ways to overcome them.
Worthy mentioning that the report considers the providing of the food staff is an emergency case aims to supply Iraqi people with four food items namely; flour, sugar, rice and food oil also the milk for the babies. The total number of
The result of the survey shows that 74,34% of people against replacing the food staff with a specific amount of money, 54,42% think there is frauds in providing these staffs, while 77,02 of Iraqi people accept the food staff if the government can monthly provide them with the rice as the main item in the basket. 66,14% insist that they receive very little staff and the missing items some time reach to 73.92 of the supposed full quantity of the items.
The minister of trade appreciated the efforts exerted by the prevention department for performing this study survey , emphasizing the need for more cooperation between his ministry and the CoI people who described them as like the unknown soldiers.
He said that his minister do its best to provide all people covered by this food staff basket and managing approximately 50 million tons of food in each merchandised by the ministry of trade in a conditions, as he described, are not consistent with the modern terms of the quantitative contracting in the internal markets. Mr. Ba Bakir accentuated that his ministry is facing setbacks of routine procedures that delay releasing financial payments for importing the food staffs allocated for the people in every month besides his ministry could not store food staffs for the strategic use and could not make maneuvers in sale seasons, his ministry also has routine procedures in dealing the Iraqi Bank of Trade regarding paying for importing these staffs and the Iraqi specifications are not consistent with the common international standards, for instance, in order to import baby milk the ministry has to send samples to Iraqi labs for testing the quantity of the mold it may contained which internationally accepted with portion not acceded 5,000% but our labs does not accept it and write reports about and that with the electricity repeated falling delay the procedures to sometime 20 days from the date of sending them to the labs.
The CoI Commissioner Judge Alla Jwad Hameed said that this study survey reflects the opinion of the people on proving the food staffs, and it is of great importance to have such meeting to discuss and determine obstacles or find mismanagement that would lead to wasting of the public interests. The Judge insisted that admitting of faults of officials or even of the respecting rules give us the change to make corrects and that is the task of CoI in protecting the public interests.
The meeting had come with some recommendations to be suggested to the concerned authorities, emphasizing the importance of convening more meetings with other office within the ministry to strengthen the relationship between the CoI and other ministry in the country.
