Staff Reporter
LAHORE: Despite the fact that the government earns billions of rupees revenue from the Lahore Dry Port, the important over 200-metre long road leading to the main entrance of the Port has been left unpaved, creating problems for movement of vehicles, for the last several years.
The broken road of the dry port causes serious inconvenience for the visitors and also led to many accidents. At least 20 to 25 containers of 20 to 40 feet length enter and leave the port daily.
“Due to the dilapidated and bad condition of the road, the containers often meet with serious mishaps,” a customs agent said.
He said that when rainy season starts the situation gets even worse as the ratio of containers’ accidents goes up but no one is there to address this grave problem.
“Most of the times, goods and articles suffer major damages, causing millions of rupees loss to the importers,” he said.
“Being the custodian of the port, the responsibility of building the road and providing basic infrastructure lies with the Railways, and the Customs Department has nothing to do with the issue. The Railways has been earning good revenue from the port but it is not ready to invest in the construction of dry port’s road,” Customs Agents Association President Agha Iftikhar said.
A Railways official speaking on the condition of anonymity said that financial position of the Railways is an open secret, the department is not able to run trains and in these conditions the Railways has no funds to undertake repair works at the Dry Port.