May 31, 2008	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 25, 1429

KARACHI, May 30: The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry has expressed serious concern over imposition of penalties by the terminal operators and days of detention of containers at the ports.

This concern was echoed during the third meeting of the KCCI Sub-Committee on Shipping and Multimodal Transport held here on Friday, the chamber said in a statement.

Collector of Customs (Care) Khawaja Tanveer Ahmed was chief guest on the occasion.

Nasir Mehmood, chairman of the sub-committee, informed the meeting that all currently terminal operators work under Collectorate Care, Shipping Lines/Agents (SL/A) under Collectorate Preventive and Freight Forwarders (FF) under Ministry of Commerce.He suggested that these bodies should come under single regulatory authority for effective monitoring of their activities and resolving day-to-day problems being faced by consignees/traders.

Mr Khawaja Tanveer suggested to terminal operators to waive Rs5,000 and Rs10,000 penalties from FR containers, enhance detention duration to 7 days from 5 and widen spaces at ports not taking much time in grounding and clearance of containers. These were agreed by COO/CEOs of all terminal operators.

This meeting was also attended by Iftikhar Ahmed Sheikh, KCCI Senior Vice Presidents Muhammad Haroon Agar and Manzoor Memon, Additional Collector Customs (Care) Changez H. Niazi, CEO QICT Captain Zafar Iqbal Awan, CEO PICT, Captain Syed Rashid Jamil, COO-KICT.—APP