PESHAWAR, Aug 21: Federal government’s decision to authorise the National Logistic Cell (NLC) to handle the Afghanistan-bound goods under the Afghan Transit Trade (ATT) at its newly-established facility at Jamrud in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) from Aug 25 has upset businessmen and railways’ authorities.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is scheduled to inaugurate the NLC’s station at Jamrud on the outskirts of Peshawar.
The station will be in addition to an NLC’s facility at Amangarh, near Peshawar on way to Nowshera.
NLC trucks and Pakistan railways wagons transporting ATT goods from Karachi would offload imported items at NLC’s station at Jamrud for customs clearance of Afghanistan-bound goods.
Official sources said that in line with the government’s decision, railways’ Peshawar city transit station and the Peshawar cantonment transit station will stop catering for the goods in transit to Afghanistan.
Under the new scheme of things, said an NLC official, the NLC’s facility at Jamrud would become the hub of activities relating to ATT.
“This would not only deprive Pakistan railways of considerable amount of revenue it was raising from its two transit stations in Peshawar, it will also require the railways to make a huge investment to upgrade its railway track from the cantonment railways station to the NLC’s facility in Jamrud,” said a PR official.
Pakistan railways would need to invest about Rs250 million to Rs300 million to upgrade its track covering a stretch of about 17 kilometres between the cantonment railways station and NLC’s facility in Jamrud.
Officials said that the rail tracks linking Peshawar with Landikotal near the Afghan border via Jamrud were incapable of bearing the full load of new wagons imported from China which, according to railways’ officials, were quiet heavy by comparison with the old cargo wagons.
Officials said that the railways would lose revenue because of the new arrangement. Apart from earning hefty freight charges, railways makes good amount of money every year on account of demurrage and storage charges.
“While we would transport goods from Karachi to Jamrud taking care of loading and unloading, NLC would make easy money on account of demurrage and storage charges,” said a railways’ official.
Importers are liable to pay demurrage charge if they don’t clear their goods within seven hours of the arrival of their consignment at the transit station, whereas, storage charges becomes liable to be paid if they keep their goods in the transit warehouses.
Apart from financial implications, the move, according to business and official circles, is also expected to create operational problems for the railways authorities as the rail track from Peshawar to Jamrud passes through runway of the Peshawar airport, which is used by commercial aircraft as well as Pakistan Air Force’s fighter jets and training aircraft.
Railways, said the officials, would need to take permission from the concerned authorities for using the track passing through the runway.
“It takes a lot of time to get permission for the Landi Kotal-bound Saffari train to cross the runway,” said the senior official.
While businessmen and customs clearance agents shared similar misgivings, they also objected to the government’s move mainly because of their security concerns.
They said that security environment in Jamrud was not conducive enough for businessmen to carry money to clear their ATT goods at the NLC facility.
“Jamrud is not safe enough where a businessman could take money every other day to clear ATT goods,” said Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, associated with the Afghan transit business.
Similar views were expressed by Gul Afzal Shinwari, president of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Transit Traders Association. He said that because of fragile security environment in Jamrud, the labour would not be able to work late.
According to NLC officials, ATT goods, transported in trucks or rail wagons from Karachi would be off loaded at Jamrud where the containers would be scanned for clearance by the customs authorities and then the importers would transport their respective consignments to Afghanistan in trucks which they would arrange on their own.
“Customs staff would not open every container to scrutinize the imported goods as we have installed a scanning machine for this purpose,” said an NLC official.