Railway's measure to raise service charges: LCAA to go on strike from February 3

Lahore Customs Agents Association has announced to go on strike from Thursday against Pakistan Railway's step to increase charges of six services including port surcharge, demurrage, crane handling, weigh bridge and gate entry fee. According to the Association, Railways had increased these charges by 20 percent despite the fact that these charges were enhanced around 300 percent some four months back.
The Association Chairman Amjad Chaudhry while talking to Business Recorder here Tuesday said that they were in negotiation process with the Railway authorities for decrease in the previous raise and a meeting was to be arranged to finalise the matter. But instead of decreasing the previous charges, Railways authorities issued a letter for a fresh increase in charges of these services.
He said soon after this circular of the railways, customs agents stopped all the work on Mughalpura Dry port. He said that these charges had not been increased on any other dry port of the country including the newly established Prem Nagar Dry Port and NLC Dry Port.
Amjad said their Association had decided to go on strike from Thursday, hold demonstrations and rallies and setting up a hunger strike camp for pressing the railway administration to withdraw this fresh discriminatory increase.
He said over 5000 people were earning their livelihood from Mughalpura Dry Port including 1100 customs agents, transporters and labourers. He feared that people would go to Karachi for clearance of their goods, as charges were not increased there. 'It can be a conspiracy to deprive Punjab from its share in the revenue generated here,' he alleged.
Meanwhile in a statement issued today, Chairman of the Association Amjad Chaudhry, President Sajid Aziz Mir and Vice President Agha Iftikhar alleged that these steps were malafide and taken to promote other dry ports located in Lahore including NLC and Prem Nagar.
They further stated that this increase would create inflation and prices all of commodities would go up, coming from Karachi and other destinations being consumed by the people of Punjab besides hurting the traders as well as business community of the province.
The office bearers pointed out that Lahore dry port was established by Z A Bhutto's government for the first time and was now being ruined in the Government of Peoples Party which was a great dilemma. They said that the Lahore dry port had a distance of seven minutes from ring road whereas the Prem Nager was at a distance of 40 minutes. They also claimed that Mughalpura Dry Port being located in the heart of city was safer than the other dry ports.