A major crisis was averted at the Karachi Port when at the intervention of the Karachi Port Trust (KPT) acting General Manager Traffic, the Customs agents resumed their export operations on late Friday. The Karachi Customs Agents Group (KCAG) had stopped all the exports through the Karachi Port after a dispute with the Karachi By Road Workers Union which had demanded illegal charges for loading Chromor on a vessel which involved no manual efforts.
KCAG President Farrukh Saleem Shaikh said on Saturday the loading of Chromor onto the vessel S.S. Sargodha had also started with the personal efforts of acting GM Traffic, Ali Mardan Abbasi, who forced the By Road Union workers to resume work and the dispute would be settled through negotiations later.
The Group had maintained that the charges demanded by the Union were illegal and unjust, as manual labour was not required for the shipment because each package was of more than 25 tons.
Due to the act of the By Road Labour Union, vehicles loaded with the export packages were struck at the Port causing congestion, apart from other charges the exporter had to bear including the heavy vessel demurrage in foreign exchange, he added.
The KCAG took up the matter with the concerned KPT officials and requested them to resolve the matter but they refused to take action against the Labour Union.
The KCAG strongly protested against the behaviour of the KPT officers and brought the issue to the notice of their high ups on Friday and had threatened to halt all the operations if the issue was not resolved.