All Pakistan Customs Agents Association (APCAA) on Thursday threatened to take legal action against the Karachi International Containers Terminal (KICT) in case of no improvement in its services being provided to the trade. Arshad Jamal, Senior Vice Chairman (APCAA) said that APCAA had requested the KICT for agenda meeting but no response had been witnessed so far, adding that if the same attitude continued by KICT, APCAA would knock the doors of court against the terminal.
He said that there was no agreement between terminals & Collectorate to fix service charges and no official directives were issued by the concerned authority for the general public in this regard. He lashed out the KICT for not facilitating trade in professional manner, saying that trade was suffering huge financial loss, due to negligence & unprofessional attitude being showed by the KICT management.
Elaborating details about the complaint lodged to customs authorities, Ministry of Port & Shipping and the management of KICT, he said that KICT was presently not in position to handle the volume of import/export and now it was routine that the traders despite paying custom duty & other taxes remained unable to take the delivery of goods in time, causing delay of 3 to 7 days.
He further said that although customs department and terminals had so far not finalized mechanism to resolve containers grounding issue, they were collecting unnecessary charges from the trade. He also requested the Chairman FBR, Member Custom and Chief Collector to look into the matter and take remedial measures to resolve the issue in amicable manner.
Moreover, he said that APCAA was also planning to organize a seminar on the issues related to malpractices, extra non-agreed charges and poor services of terminals in order to make authorities aware about the problems being faced by the trade besides providing congenial environment for the trade.