Rs 472.28 million assets of drug traffickers forfeited

The Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) has forfeited assets of drug traffickers worth Rs 472.28 million and frozen their assets of Rs 4,257.917 million.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Wednesday that the ANF initiated a number of financial investigations against 179 cases of drug trafficking registered during last year. Out of these, 127 are pending in courts appeals forwarded against 33 cases and 19 cases are under-investigation.
They said that per kilogram price of high quality opium ranges from Rs 15,000 equivalent to $250 to Rs 20,000 equivalent to $333 at various locations in the country.
The key factors for determining the prices of opium are proximity to Afghan areas conspicuous for poppy cultivation, deployment of law-enforcement agencies, market demand and availability of cheap carriers, they added.
Sources said the number of seizures made during the last year dropped from 49,279 in 2004 to 42,025 in 2005, indicating a decline of 14.72 percent and 42,132 drug-traffickers were arrested during the previous year.
During 2005, 2,144.38-kg heroin, 22,196.8-kg morphine, 643.75-kg opium and 93,539.07-kg hashish were seized in the country, they added. Whereas, 410-kg heroin, 4,847-kg opium, 27,666-kg morphine, and 14,277-kg hashish were seized in 2006.
Sources said the government is making efforts to enhance international co-operation by signing maximum MoUs with affected countries and the country has so far signed 26 MoUs and 28 extradition treaties with foreign countries. Moreover the country is a signatory to all the three UN Conventions and several regional conventions on narcotics.
Pakistan has 4 million drug-addicts, out of these, 500,000 are heroin-users inclined towards high-risk practices that make them vulnerable to infectious blood-borne diseases such as Hepatitis and HIV/AIDS particularly among injecting drug-users, they added. About 2.5 million Afghans are engaged in growing 4,000 tonnes of poppy on 130,000 hectares of land in over 32 provinces.
It is required that counter-narcotics and border security-related funds granted by international community as Rs 14 billion by the US alone in the last five years must be utilised properly to put an end to drug smuggling, they added.
Sources said that grant allocated for documentation should be properly utilised to improve the national database, including automated fingerprint identification and all the authorities concerned must be enabled to utilise the grant properly.