Exporters of value-added textile products on Thursday urged the Anti Narcotics Force (ANF), customs, and operators of port terminals to streamline their affairs to minimise shipment delays. At a meeting with Director ANF, Sindh, Brigadier Muhammad Wajid at the PHMA House, members of Value Added Textile Forum (VTF) raised issues relating to delays of their consignments.
Chief co-ordinator of PHMA and Chairman of Pakistan Apparel Forum M Jawed Bilwani Chairman of PHMA, North Zone Usman Jawaad, Chairman, South Zone, Abdul Rauf Patel, Deputy Chief Co-ordinator, Junaid Makda, Chairman of Paksea M Kamran Chandna, former chairman Paksea, Rafiq Godil, Chairman of Prgmea, Atiq Kochra, Vice-Chairman PBEA, Naqi Bari and a number of apparel exporters participated in the discussion.
Javed Bilwani stressed the need for improving the cargo clearance system, complicated by the involvement of various agencies at ports. He said delays would be reduced by 70 percent if the status of cargo was monitored electronically, besides allowing shippers to know the name and contact numbers of inspectors concerned.
He said the ANF and ports officials, customs, model collectorate and other relevant agencies should work around the clock to facilitate exports. He said docks around the world operated 24 hours a day. He said exporters suffered losses on account of delays in shipment, adding that shippers had to supply their commodities via air shipment and pay a higher tariff by comparison with expenses incurred on seaborne transportation.
Enumerating other factors causing delays, Bilwani said that cargo shipments were also delayed because of the poor law and order situation, which hindered export cargo from reaching harbours on time. Exporters also called for safe inspection of goods. In reply to the exporters' concerns, Brigadier Muhammad Wajid said efforts were needed to improve the inspection system at docks.
Urging exporters to discourage bribes as a means to expedite cargo inspections, he said that this practice damaged the entire system. He pointed out that ANF had recently detained a number of fraudsters who were minting money from exporters for "speeding up their cargo clearance". Brigadier Wajid said that the ANF had detected 12 containers loaded with prohibited substances over the past 18 months. He said thorough inspection of containers also yielded 550 kilograms of heroin.
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