Staff Reporter
The Pakistan Customs has limited resources to check smuggling of goods all across the country’s borders, a senior official said on Saturday.
Customs Collector Saqif Saeed said so while presenting quarterly report of the Customs Collectorate. The report detailed five key operations carried out in the last quarter from October 2019 to December 2019. They pertained to raids conducted in SITE Area, Jama Cloth Market, City Station, Regal Chowk and Jodia Bazaar.
Saeed said the agency surpassed the Rs1.17 billion target of the previous quarter set by the Federal Board of Revenue. It seized smuggled cigarettes, drugs, liquor, betel nuts and cars worth Rs1.26 billion, according to the official. He said the Pakistan Customs has designed sophisticated plans not only to foil smuggling attempts, but to disintegrate networks behind them.
Saeed, however, regretted that there was a very limited force to check smuggling all across the borders. “We are improving and we will get to the networks that are run from outside Pakistan,” he said, when asked about any coordinated efforts to arrest smugglers. The official said three smugglers had pleaded guilty before the courts since he took charge in October 2019. This “is a great achievement on our part,” he added.
