India-Afghan trade to resume through Wagah today

GS PAUL

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, July 14

With Pakistan facilitating its transit route to Afghanistan for trade with India through the Attari-Wagah border from July 15, the Land Port Authority of India (LPAI) and the Amritsar Customs Department have geared up at the Integrated Check Post (ICP), Attari.

A communication has been received here from Islamabad that under the Pakistan-Afghanistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA), the Afghan traders would have access to eastern Wagah border to reach Attari, where their goods would be offloaded.

Confirming this, LPAI official Sukhdev Singh said the Afghani trucks were expected to start coming from tomorrow onwards from Wagah side. Earlier, in normal course, 20-25 trucks used to come daily.

“The requisite arrangements in the wake of Covid-19 have been made. The health teams would screen the driver’s health status at zero line, before letting the truck gain entry. Our staff is also equipped with safety gear and only limited number of porters were called up,” he said.

Amritsar Customs’ Commissioner Dipak Kumar Gupta said the scavenging teams, including sniffer dog squads, have been deputed at Attari.

The Central Government had suspended cross-border trade through the Attari ICP, which facilitates India’s trade with Pakistan and Afghanistan, on March 13 as a precautionary measure amid the Covid pandemic.

It is learnt that on special request of the Afghanistan government, the Pakistan Government agreed for the Afghanistan-India transit trade and resumed its bilateral trade with all border crossings with Afghanistan that were earlier closed due to spurt in Covid-19 cases.

The agreement, however, does not permit Indian goods to be loaded onto trucks for transit back to Afghanistan.