Wednesday's bloody incidents of violence and the nerve-racking tension on Thursday impacted the activities at the city's two ports by 30 to 50 percent, Business Recorder learnt on Friday. According to official sources, the serious law and order situation in the port neighbourhood had affected the imports and exports at Pakistan International Container Terminal (PICT) by 50 and 30 percent respectively.
They said that usually the daily "inward" and "outward" movements at the terminal is 900 and 400-500 vehicles respectively, but due to shortage of means of transportation the consignees could not lift their imported goods. Similarly, the supply of exportable cargo remained interrupted by 30 percent with ship traffic going on without any disturbance, sources added.
The trade activities at Karachi International Container Terminal (KICT) also witnessed a "short term" effect in terms of "gate or yard operations". According to KICT sources, the impact of two-day violence at the container terminal ranged from 10 to 30 percent on account of imports and exports or, in other words, "gate-in" and "gate-out" movements.
They said that daily container movement from and to KICT was around 350 (exportable) and 1000 (imported), of which at least 100 exportable containers could not enter the terminal on Wednesday while on Thursday no impact was observed. On the import side, the parties could pick up 900 containers and 750 containers respectively on Wednesday and Thursday, they added.
The vessel operation at KICT did not face any disturbance due to, what sources said, the operator's operational capacity and efficiency backed by state-of-the-art port equipment. They, however, expressed concern that in case of more violence the terminal would face a big congestion problem, like post-December 27 violence.
"We have concern that if the law and order situation deteriorates or does not improve we would have great congestion in container yard," they said. Port Qasim and Karachi Port are the two ports where violence left no or nominal impact on trade activities.Official sources in Port Qasim Authority (PQA) claimed to have zero impact on cargo handling because of the port's reliability on upcountry cargo (mainly cement).
Sources at Karachi Port also came up with the same answer and referred to the nearby warehouses in Sultanabad, 15 Number etc, as source of exportable cargo supply. A spokesman of KPT claimed that due to availability of a waste back-up area for cargo storage no congestion took place at the port. "Things are normal and no impact is there as we have enough space for storage of un-lifted cargo," he added.