NA body recommends providing vehicle scanners to check LoC trade

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly's Standing Committee on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Thursday recommended to provide vehicle scanners and other facilities to Travel and Trade Authority  (TADA), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) for scrutinizing goods imported from the Indian occupied Kashmir (IoK).

A meeting of the committee chaired by Malik Ibrar Ahmed was briefed about the workings and problems being faced by TADA in managing / checking cross-border trade between AJK and IoK. The meeting was told that TADA was checking trucks of goods being imported from the occupied Kashmir manually.

The committee recommended to expedite the approval of establishing wholesale markets and cold storages near the entry points of AJK for saving perishable items, besides devising a strategy to consume imported items in the AJK markets.

The Ministry of Commerce and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) should determine the status of goods duly purchased by the Pakistani traders from those markets and then shipped to various destinations in Pakistan, it added.

The meeting was told that the TADA had proposed increasing the items of trade including tea, ready-made garments, plain cloth (cotton) ghee, cooking oil, salt, medicine, cement, sugar and surgical equipment.

The meeting offered Fateha for the martyrs of IoK and Palestine, and those massacred in Kunduz, Afghanistan and victims of terrorist acts in Quetta.

The committee directed the additional secretary Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit Baltistan to investigate illegal allotment of plots in housing scheme launched for Kashmiri refugees in Quetta and report the people involved in illegal allotment.

The meeting was attended by Khalil George, Ms Shams un Nisa, Dr Shazia Sobia, Junaid Akbar and Maulvi Agha Muhammad and senior officials of Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan.