July 22, 2020
On July 22, 2020, Pak-Afghan Parliamentary Friendship Group Task Force on Tracking & Scanning of Containers met under the chairmanship of Member National Assembly M.Yaqub Sheikh. During the meeting, it was decided to make proposals for making scanning and tracking of containers at border up to international standards to facilitate exporters and importers at the Pak-Afghan border. Furthermore, Pakistan’s Special Envoy to Afghanistan, Ambassador Mohammad Sadiq, suggested to simplify the scanning process to create convenience for the traders.
Moreover, the second meeting of the task force of Pak-Afghan Parliamentary Friendship Group, chaired by MNA Shandana Gulzar, also recommended waiving the demurrage charges imposed on the containers due to COVID-19.
The issue of increasing demurrages on Afghan containers, the sluggish pace of screening the containers and the limitation of installing tracking devices on the containers by just one vendor had been raised by CRSS continuously with the relevant government authorities. CRSS, along with PAJCCI, in its last focus group discussion with Ambassador Sadiq on June 22, 2020, had raised these concerns. To these, Ambassador Sadiq had assured the business stakeholders present in the FGD that he would resolve these matters at the earliest.
