Improving our dry ports

When the Islamabad/Rawalpindi Dry Port was inaugurated three years ago to replace the old one in Rawalpindi, the users expected it to be a modern, sate-of-the-art facility. It turned out to be quite the opposite. That came out clearly at Friday's meeting of the Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) standing committee, where the chamber president expressed serious concern, on behalf of the area's business community, over the prevailing conditions.
He lamented that the Railways has placed obsolete and rusty cranes and second-hand machinery at the port, that no fork-lifts are available, and the customs clearing agents have to pay Rs 200 per run to hire these machines. All this despite the fact that the terms of the contract included the assurance that modern, state-of-the-art machinery would be brought in.
The unsurprising result of this cheating is lower efficiency level, which, in turn, creates hardships for the importers and exporters. An idea of how inadequate is the quality of service at the facility can be had from the following comparison: The Karachi port has the capacity of offloading as many as 1,150 containers in four hours' time.
At the newly established Rawalpindi/Islamabad dry port it takes 12 to 14 hours to handle about 250 containers only. Some of the cargo also gets damaged due to poor handling. Conditions at the Peshawar Dry Port, which in addition to usual consignments also handles the shipments to and from Afghanistan, are not any better.
A few days ago, when a delegation of the All Pakistan Commercial Exporters Association called on the Director General of Trade Development Authority of Pakistan, Waheed Raza Bhatti, in Peshawar, its principal complaint also related to problems at the city's dry port. The delegation members said that lack of facilities at the port was forcing them to transport their Karachi-bound consignments through trucks.
The situation being what it is, the traders have to confront needless difficulties, while the overall economic activity suffers, too. This sordid state of affairs is a consequence of the absence of any sort of accountability. As the RCCI representatives have pointed out, the terms of the contract for the Rawalpindi/Islamabad Dry Port included the provision that only modern machinery would be made available.
If that is not the case, somebody should be held accountable. And, of course, it must also be ensured that the outdated machinery goes out, and newer one brought in at this and all other dry ports so they can handle cargo in an orderly and efficient manner.