The scanning activities on trucks carrying goods from India at Benapole Port has been suspended for more than a year.
The customs authorities are not upset even though this puts safe trade at risk. Traders say that while the scanning activity benefits corrupt traders, ordinary traders suffer and are harassed.
Trade related people said that due to the ease of communication, businessmen are more interested in import-export trade using Benapole and India's Petrapole ports. Customs, ports, BGB and government intelligence agencies monitor trade security. There is a mobile scanning machine under customs control on the bypass road of Benapole port to prevent any falsely declared goods or smuggled goods from entering the cargo truck. Which is being operated by the contractor Fiber Associates.
But after the scanning machine was shut down for a year due to a mechanical fault, a new scanning machine has finally been installed at the Benapole Port Cargo Vehicle Terminal. Although it was fully prepared for official operations three months ago after trial scanning, no cargo trucks are being scanned. As a result, smuggling and irregularities are occurring freely on legal routes.
According to information from the Petrapole border in India, the border guard BSF has recovered 16 gold consignments from trucks transporting goods in the last one year. However, due to the weak security measures of Benapole customs, all the large gold consignments are being seized by India. In addition, unimportable goods and drugs are freely coming in with false declarations.
Importer Jahangir Hossain said that while corrupt businessmen are benefiting from the shutdown of the scanning machine, ordinary businessmen are suffering. Besides, crores of taka have been spent on its operation, but it is not being used for any purpose. Government money is being wasted. Safe trade is also at risk.
Goods truck driver Ashiq was in favor of introducing the scanning machine, saying that if it is operational, their harassment will stop. No one will load illegal goods into the truck.
C&F trader Sajedur Rahman said that scanning machines have been installed to facilitate trade, reduce the time for unloading goods and prevent smuggling. If it is kept operational, safe trade will be ensured.
Benapole Land Port Director (Traffic) Shamim Hossain said, "We are requesting Customs to quickly start scanning to ensure safe trade through legal channels."
Boni Amin of Fiber Associates, a customs contractor assigned to monitor the scanning machine, said that they could not scan trucks carrying goods for about a year because the mobile scanning machine was out of order. Now another new scanning machine is ready to work. However, they are having to sit around because the customs authorities have not sent the trucks.
It is mentioned that on June 27, 2018, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) announced the introduction of mandatory scanning of trucks carrying goods before the unloading of 38 Indian goods at Benapole Port. There were many irregularities in the shipment of these goods. In addition, there were cases of customs evasion due to false declarations on these goods. As a result of the introduction of scanning on these goods, smuggling of goods was stopped. However, the scanning machine remains closed for most of the year due to various reasons including mechanical faults.
