Afghan govt bans entry of 20 containers

Ahmad Nabi

LANDI KOTAL: Because of fear of spreading of coronavirus, the Afghan government stopped 20 transit containers at Torkham border, loaded with chicken imported from United State of America here on Thursday. It is worth mentioning here that 20 prohibited containers were loaded with chicken imported from USA for merchandise purpose in Afghanistan.

The clearing agent association, official in Torkham said that after clearing by the Pak custom center at the border when the containers approached the Pak-Afghan sharing border, Torkham to cross, the Afghan border security officials refused to let pass it towards Kabul on the plea that the imported items might have coronavirus that could spread in Afghanistan. He said they had been told that on the direction of their highups, they blocked the entry of the 20 transit loaded chiken, imported from America.  

When a custom official in Torkham was contacted on the matter he said that they had already cleared the containers and that was not their headache if Afghan official was not permitting it to enter in their territory. The chief executive of Khyber Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Haji Jabir Shinwari while confirming it said that the Pak officials initiated dialog with their counterpart at the border to convince them to let cross the containers to Afghanistan but to in avail. It is to be stated here that two conronavirus cases have been reported in Pakistan while Afghanistan has one case.