KARACHI: Visitors are facing acute problems in their daily affairs due to the non-operational condition of all three visitors’ specific elevators in Customs House.
Three elevators for visitors, mainly importers and clearing agents are installed at Custom House, Karachi in order to facilitate them for travelling from ground floor to 11th floor of the building; two executive elevators are allocated for Customs officials only.
The visitors, while expressing their agony, said that they were facing immense problems to carry out their routine works as they could not travel to 11th floor through staircase.
“The non-operational condition of three visitors specific elevators compel us to use officials’ elevators, which has capacity of lifting only 5 to 6 persons at a time,” one of the complaining importer added.
Others said that the daily affairs were badly affected by the non-operation of elevators, as score of visitors gathered outside the officials’ elevators to be lifted to the desirable floor. However, most of the time, they waited in long queues for their turns as the operators were busy facilitating the customs officials on priority.
“The exchange of hot words between operators and visitors were often witnessed, as the operators do not allow the visitors, clearing agents and importers to move into the officials’ elevators due to Customs officials’ facilitation on priority,” said a troubled clearing agent.
It is pertinent to mention here that two of the three visitors’ specific elevators have been non-operational for the last 5 years or so. The only functional one of them recently became defected i.e., a week ago.