MULTAN: :Model Customs Collectorate Multan Collector Sarfraz Ahmad Warraich said that more customs officials have been deputed at Multan International Airport to stop the smuggling of non-duty paid items and money laundering.
He stated this while briefing the media person about a recent seizure of branded cell phones and external memory cards from Multan Airport.
He said that only 10 foreign flights were operating from Multan Airport before the inauguration of Multan International Airport and now the number of flights has increased to over 80 per week. The Qatar Airways, Emirates, Air Arabia, Dubai Airways and other airlines have started operations from Multan. He said “We have a huge challenge to profile and check every passenger as thousands of passengers travel from the Multan International Airport every day.”
While addressing the press conference regarding the seizure of smuggled cell phones and memory cards, he said that his customs branch has received reliable information that an attempt of smuggling will be made on 4th and 5th of August.
After realizing the sensitivity of the issue, Collector Sarfraz directed customs staff to ensure monitoring of goods to foil any smuggling attempt. Deputy Collector Abdul Mueed was also specially assigned a task on the directives of Collector Sarfraz Ahmad Warraich to ensure that there should be no flaws in the customs checking during scanning from the customs staff.
A private flight Shaheen Airways, which landed exactly at 2:45am, at the airport from Dubai and almost 250 passengers were in the flight customs conduct thorough inspection of goods to avoid any sort of smuggling attempt.
When the Customs staff have completed the monitoring of the passenger handbags and carriages then Shaheen Airway staff at the Multan International Airport was coming with three missing bags for the submitting them at the counter for mishandling carriages that any passenger unable to pick their carriage .
Customs staff took the carriages for the examination and during scanning it creates doubts in the minds of staff due to exact same pattern of items were placed in the observed in the bags at the time of scanning then customs staff exposed the bags for inspection in the presence of Shaheen Airways then they found two bags of cell phones including the Nokia of various variety and Samsung. Almost 1000 cell phones of Nokia with different prices and 36 expansive cell phones of Galaxy note edge, S6, Grand Prime were existing.
Customs found 40,392 memory cards of 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB from the bag of mishandled carriage during the examination .Customs found the owner of the said items during the investigation as passenger of the said bags have not removed the identity tags from the carriage of the bags set by the Airline Company after landing and these tags verifies his identity and possession at the time of arrival.
Collector Sarfraz Ahmad Warraich told Customs Today that passenger was attempting to clear the smuggled goods having value at Rs.14.1 million without paying duty and taxes but passenger quickly fled away throwing his bags after watching strict scrutiny of the goods at the airport.
He lauded the performance of his staff for foiling the attempt of smuggling and directs all Customs employees to continue the same performance in the future.
Collector Sarfraz Ahmad Warraich has appreciated the staff member Inspector Asif Ali, Inspector Shafqat, Inspector Muhammad Iqbal for foiling the smuggling bid at the airport, besides directing Deputy Collector Abdul Mueed Kanjoo to make the vigilance stricter to curb the menace of smuggling.
