Daily Times

KHYBER AGENCY: The transporters community resented President Ashraf Ghani’s statement for blocking Pakistani trailers at Pak-Afghan sharing border, Torkham.

In a press conference held in Landi Kotal press club on Tuesday, All Trailers Owners Association President Yousaf Afridi said that if the Afghan government materialized the policy of not allowing Pakistani transport into its country then it would not only affect the Pakistan transports community but would also affect the trade between the two neighboring countries.

He said that the density of trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan via Torkham had already decreased with introduction of curbing policy of Ashraf Ghani and would cause price hike of daily usage commodities in Afghanistan. The transport association representative flanked by other cabinet members of the association including Vice-President Asghar Shinwari and General Secretary Mehmood Shah expressed ignorance of the causes of the strict policy the Afghan government threatened to implement and said that trade agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan that expired recently needed to be renewed.

“The Afghan government has already restricted and limited their movements inside Afghanistan and the imposing of this unfair policy will deprive more than five thousands families of transporters of three-time meals,” Afridi said.

He further added that the average transporter has been subjected to worst kind of injustice from Karachi to Kabul for a very long time.

Mr Afridi urged the two countries to settle their issues through dialog and suggested to form a committee comprising representatives of the both countries that could supervise all the matters.

When Torkham Naib Tehsildar Shams-ul-Islam was contacted on the matter, he said that no information of blocking of Pakistani trailers at the border was received from the Afghan government and the crossing of the border was still taking place.

Published in Daily Times, October 25^th 2017.