Terminal business: No cross-LoC trade this week

Traders suffered losses running into millions of rupees due to lack of storage.

MUZAFFARABAD: Intra-Kashmir traders announced that they would boycott weekly trade this week to protest against the unavailability of storage facility on the Line of Control (LoC).

Intra-Kashmir Traders’ Association, a joint body of the traders of both sides of the divide, announced the boycott after incurring losses of millions of rupees after their goods were damaged in rain along the terminal in the Salamabad near the LoC.

“There will be no trans-LoC trade…on Tuesday and Wednesday as traders in occupied Kashmir have (also) decided to stage a protest,” a Kashmiri trader Aijaz Ahmad Mir told The Express Tribune.

He said that Azad Kashmir traders lacked proper facilities to protect their goods that are coming in from across the LoC and demanded that the authorities provide them with adequate facilities at the Chakothi terminal.

Mir said that because of the non-availability of a covered storage facility at Salamabad, traders had suffered losses amounting to millions of rupees last week.

“They have decided to stop trade along the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road indefinitely as the government has not made necessary arrangements for storage of goods at the Salamabad trade faciliation centre,” Mir said, quoting a conversation with a counterpart on the other side of the LoC.

Mir said most of their goods were lying unprotected in open areas.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2011.