Authorities asked to open Afghan border

PESHAWAR: Pak-Afghan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry complained on Friday that the closure of the Torkham border for the last six days had left stranded over 7,000 trucks laden with goods stranded which include perishable items like fresh fruit, vegetable, juices, poultry, eggs, etc.

The director of the chamber, Zia-ul-Haq Sarhadi, told reporters that the queues of the stranded trucks had reached Hamza Baba Chowk and if the border crossing was not opened, that would be stretched to Peshawar, inflicting enormous losses on exporters and businessmen.

He said halting containers on the way to Afghanistan was causing demurrage charges to exporters on a daily basis besides affecting the perishable items.

Explaining his point, Sarhadi said every container of sugar was being charged a demurrage of Rs 45,000 daily. The container filled with transit goods is charged US dollar 160 on a daily basis as detention charges.

Similarly, every truck is fined Rs. 6,000 on daily basis as a holding charge.

Pointing to another issue, Sarhadi said the export quota of sugar to Afghanistan would expire in 45 days which has only 30 days left and the business community would face huge losses if urgent measures were not taken.

He said the Afghan side on Thursday had opened the border crossing

but it remained closed from the Pakistan side,

causing concern to businessmen and other stakeholders of the Pak-Afghan trade.

Sarhadi said the closure of the border was not only inflicting losses in millions of rupees on the exchequer but was also creating a lot of problems for the ailing Afghans who wanted to come here for treatment.

He demanded the Pakistan authorities to open the border at the earliest so that stuck-up goods loaded onto the trucks could reach their destinations.