KARACHI: Shabbir Mansha Churra, convener of central standing committee on Customs of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI), and also the founder chairman of Pakistan Artificial Leather Imports and Merchants Association (PALIMA), has urged the collector Customs (A-South) to issue the directives to the terminal operators to ground the imported containers as soon as possible so that importers can be saved from heavy financial losses in terms of demurrage and detention charges.

Drawing attention towards the issue regarding delay in grounding of containers at terminal, he said we have been informed that traders are facing unnecessary delays in clearance of their consignments especially at KICTL and QICTL due to delay in grounding of containers marked for the examination.

"It has been observed that after a month or two, traders are facing backlog trouble at container terminals and nowadays a huge backlog of the containers is started which is increasing day by day and still there is a backlog of 6 to 9 days," Mansha pointed out.

Shabbir Churra requested the collector Customs to look into this matter on priority basis and immediate action may kindly be taken in order to make necessary arrangements for timely grounding of containers and till the clearance of all backlog the terminal operators should compensate the amount of shipping container rent which is no doubt occurring due to fault of terminal.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020