9 days after closure of Attari ICP, porters, transporters shift to other vocations

Nine days after the closure of the Attari Integrated Check Post (ICP), porters and transporters have shifted to other vocations to eke out their living.

Most of the porters and transporters are suffering as their earnings from the lone import from Afghanistan have totally ceased. Import from Afghanistan has been the only source of their earning from the ICP since 2019 when Pakistan had snapped all kinds of business activities with India to protest against the abrogation of Article 376 from Jammu and Kashmir.

Kulwinder Singh, an office-bearer of the Attari Border Truck Operators’ Association, said about 230 trucks of nearly 80 members came to a halt after the closure of the ICP. They had been getting some orders to deliver the Afghan goods to different parts of the country after 2019. Now these trucks are entirely dependent on orders emanating from farmers to take their harvest to mandis, rice millers, distilleries at Khasa and factories.

He recalled that there used to be over 500 trucks before 2019 the number of which came down to 230. Now members are likely to take away trucks to focus on other areas for a living.

The transport sector used to employ hundreds of truck drivers, cleaners and technicians, who came from all over Amritsar and Tarn Taran, to eke out a living. With the closure of the ICP, they are also shifting to other vocations to eke out a living.

Over a week after the functioning of the ICP came to a complete halt, Sukhchain Singh, 31, has shifted from being a porter to a helper of a tractor-trolley driver. “Being a sole bread earner in the family, it is indispensable for me to earn daily. Earning a living from the border has never been a cakewalk. Uncertainty has always been there.”