Trucks carrying containers of goods for NATO do not pay any levy to the government. The Karachi Port Trust (KPT) charges only Rs400 from each container in terms of wharfage, while the Qasim International Containers Terminal (QICT) also has the same charges for the containers of NATO cargo, sources informed.
The said wharfage charges levied on the containers carrying the goods meant for NATO is the same for all containers coming to Pakistan. According to sources the amount Pakistan government charges NATO is negligible when compared to the billions in infrastructural losses they have caused the country. Logistics experts said that there are many tolls and taxes under the category of sharing corridors all over the world and these taxes correspond to the infrastructural losses that the host country incurs.
The trucks that carry this cargo are ‘diggers’ and do more harm to roads. Logistics experts also said that if the concerned authorities want to reduce this harm they should make it mandatory that only multi-excel trucks be used for transportation of cargo. “Diggers are dangerous for roads, while the weight is equally distributed in multi-excel trucks and this is the reason why these sort of trucks should be used in the transportation of carriages” they added.
It is also worth mentioning that the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) is lobbying politicians on the dangers of badly packed, overweight, inadequately secured and mis-declared containers.
In regards to this matter the federation called for ‘global regulations’ on such containers in an International Labor Organization (ILO) debate this February last. The ILO stated that “many accidents in the transport sector are attributed to poor practices in relation to packing of containers, including overloading”.
This was in response to the lobbying of ITF at the ILO’s Global Dialogue Forum on Safety in the Supply Chain in Relation to Packing of Containers, where it was a matter of grave concern that many countries face safety issues related to overloaded cargo containers.
ITF general secretary David Cockroft at that time demanded international rules making it mandatory that the parties involved in handing and moving of containers be informed about “their weight, state of packing, stowage and securing, as well as their centre of gravity and whether or not any fumigants or dangerous substances are present.”
It was reported earlier that NATO containers have caused damages of more than Rs82 billion to the Pakistani roads and infrastructure as around 500 trucks travel to Afghanistan on a daily basis carrying NATO containers.
82 billion rupees is too conservative an estimate of road damage,it could run into hundred of trillion rupees in all due the benevolent concessions given to USA,UK,NATO by our rulers.The war has destroyed the country by 68 billion dollars but fattened the purses of rich ruling elites with trillions of dollars in foreign banks.
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