ISLAMABAD: Over one hundred thousand tonnes of IRRI-6 rice stocked at Hawkes Bay, Karachi is feared to have been damaged due to the torrential rains in the port city, reveals a letter of PASSCO to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MinFA) on Thursday. The Pakistan Agriculture Storage and Supplies Corporation (PASSCO) had rented 13 sites to store 118,534 tonnes of IRRI-6 rice purchased under Phase I and II of the government-sponsored procurement drive. The procured rice was shifted from rice mills to warehouses rented out at Karachi and Dhabejee due to non-availability of covered warehouses in Sindh, the letter added. The federal government had assigned PASSCO the task to procure paddy/rice ex-Kharif 2008-09 crop from all over the country. It purchased basmati rice from Punjab and IRRI-6 from southern parts of Punjab, eastern Balochistan and interior Sindh. The heavy rains have damaged the windowpanes of a hired warehouse while rainwater has also entered other leased warehouses damaging the stored rice, said the letter. However, PASSCO management is ascertaining the losses as well as to take immediate necessary steps, actions and remedial measures to handle the situation and also cut down the losses through all feasible means, it added.