Cash crunch brings India-Pak trade to grinding halt

There was no import of goods from Pakistan to India for the second consecutive day on Thursday, after the suspension of work by porters at the Integrated Check Post (ICP) in Attari, as a majority of Indian traders had asked Pakistani traders to freeze the movement of trucks until cash flows normalise in India.

According to an ANI, not even a single truckload of goods arrived from Pakistan at the ICP on Thursday since the service providers appointed by the Centre Warehousing Corporation (CWC) have virtually no cash to pay the porters for the loading and unloading of goods.

The porters went on an indefinite strike on Wednesday demanding their wages in cash.

"We had paid wages to those porters who have shared their bank details with us. But out of nearly 1,433 porters, only a few have shared their accounts, while the rest of them want to be paid in cash," said sources at the ICP.

Shubegh Singh, a former president of the porters' union at Attari, said, "All porters are not interested in getting paid by cheque. They want their wages in cash."

He alleged that there were some porter leaders who didn't want all porters to have their bank accounts and were exploiting the situation.

"All the 1,433 porters should have bank accounts and the wages will directly be transferred into their accounts," he said.