PESHAWAR: The growing trend of smuggling on Pak-Afghan Border has surpassed ratio of legal import, while huge difference have been recorded between amount of goods and legally imported items which may affect the sale of imported goods, thus causing losses to the businessmen due to high ratio of smuggling.
The smuggling of various items including, fabric, tyres, soup, TV, LCDs, LEDs and others goods are increased in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa due to negligence of concerned authorities, including Customs officials, Frontier Constabulary, Peshawar Police and Political Administration of Khyber Agency.
Official’s statistic said that cost of one 40-feet imported container of fabric is Rs 9,050,000 while the cost of 40-feet smuggled container of the same fabric is Rs 8,720,310, the difference is Rs 329,690.
Similarly, cost of one container of tyres transport to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa legally is Rs 4,963,200 and the cost of smuggled container is Rs 4,610,000 which gives loss of Rs 353,200 to government treasure.
Worth of legal imported soap container is Rs 4,753,812 while worth of illegal smuggled container is Rs 4,093,390, if one 40-feet container has smuggled it bestow Rs 660,422 loss to government treasure.
Beside these goods, cost of each legal 40-feet container of Television is Rs 5,543,578 which reduced to Rs 4,660,000, if the container has smuggled through Pak-Afghan Border.
Similarly, each container of air conditioner container is Rs 6,138,00 while the same container smuggled to Peshawar in Rs 5,310,000. if the same container is smuggled to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa it gives loss of Rs 828,000 to government treasure.
Worth of each container of refrigerators is Rs 2,486,286 while the same container smuggled from other country is Rs 2,412,000 which give Rs 72,286 loss to national exchequer.
Sources said that each and every day illegal containers smuggled from Afghanistan through Shalman area of Landi Kotal through Pak-Afghan Border, whereas, Custom officials are not authorized to seized the illegal goods, however, officials of Frontier Constabulary and Khasadar force take huge amount of bribes from these transporters and let them go.
An official said that around 3,500 personnel of FC and 20,000 Khasadar Forces were deployed in between Torkham to Peshawar. However, astonishingly despite such a huge contingent, the transporters easily cross the tribal area and entered in Peshawar. “After entering Peshawar, police start taking bribe from these illegal transporters and collect huge sum of amount”.
The official added, despite Peshawar Police are not authorized to seize the smuggled goods, but cops take bribes from the transporters, “those transporters who do not pay bribe to police, cops arrest them and handed over the goods to Customs department.
