KARACHI: The importers and clearing agents are facing severe hardships and even suffering losses due to inordinate delay in the clearance of imported goods from Gerrys D’nata shed at AFU Karachi.
President Karachi Customs Agents Association Khurram Ejaz and Secretary General Wasiq Hussain said in a statement that the issue was prevailing for a couple of months, due to which importers and customs agents were facing extreme problems.
Arranging of shipments for examination takes several days due to improper stacking of goods in Gerry’s D’nata Shed.
Due to incompetency and shortage of shed staff the cargo handling work is suffering very badly and rush of cargo remains all time in the shed. Whereas, shortage of space for placing of cargo for examination is also observed.
The delivery timings are too short, most of the shipments remain undelivered due to non-completion of customs formalities, as well as rush on payment counters for payment of the charges resulting in delay in clearance of goods and due to these reasons limited space is available to accommodate fresh cargo.
On top of that, the staff of Gerrys D’nata is quite inefficient and arrogant and instead of facilitating traders they are torturing the traders and customs agents. It seems that Customs authorities are helpless before them and cannot control them.
As a matter of fact and it is pertinent to mention here that traders import their consignment by air only with the purpose that the delivery of cargo will be made rapidly in time and will be delivered to the consignee well in time for which they paid heavy airfreight charges. Whereas, the delivery of the cargo is not made in time and the purpose of imports of cargo becomes unfruitful.
KCAA demanded of the Customs authorities to resolve the aforementioned problems immediately and strict action be taken against the sheds who are not complying with the rules and regulations such as Gerrys D’nata.