Wants speedy transportation of ICD-bound containers
Inland Container Depot of Bangladesh Customs has requested the Bangladesh Railway to speed up the transportation of ICD-bound containers from Chittagong Port to reduce congestion and the cost of doing business, officials said. They said that a severe container congestion was created at Chittagong Port because of delay in transportation of containers from the port to ICD at Kamalapur in Dhaka.
According to Dhaka Customs Agents Association, a total of 1,300 containers remained stuck at the port till Tuesday, waiting for being transported to ICD, Dhaka.
Everyday, around 100 new containers are being added in the waiting row, they said.
‘Last week, we sent a letter to the director general of Bangladesh Railway to speed up the transportation to facilitate international trade and reduce the cost of doing business of the importers,’ ICD Dhaka commissioner SM Humayun Kabir told New Age on Wednesday.
‘We also requested the BR for increasing the container transportation capacity to solve the problem,’ he said.
The containers which the importers want to release from the capital are brought to the Dhaka ICD.
DCCA president Sheikh Md Farid said that they also wrote a letter to Bangladesh Railway in this regard saying that importers had to bear additional costs as the port authority charged storage rent for delay in transportation.
Currently, ICD-bound containers can be kept at the port for three days without any charge. Importers have to pay at the rate US$ 20 for a day after three days.
‘Importers are not liable in any way for the delay as it is the responsibility of BR to carry the containers in time,’ he said.
So, charging storage rent from the importers is not justified, he said.
He alleged that BR did not maintain any time schedule for running container trains that intensified the congestion.
From December last year, containers started to pile up at Chittagong Port and the situation became worst since early January after the BNP-led opposition parties imposed indefinite blockade across the country, importers said.
From then onwards, BR diverted its focus on passenger transportation instead of running goods trains as people chose railway for travelling as bus journey became risky because of arson attacks and long-distance buses remained off the roads, they said.
Slow speed of trains to avoid accidents also disrupted the railway schedules.
Usually, BR runs two trains a day from Chittagong to ICD and carry around 150 containers but now they irregularly run container trains.
The problem can be solved within a week if the BR adds additional trains along with maintaining the regular train schedule, officials said.
-With New Age input
