Crack down on cattle smuggling
21 April 2011A delegation led by Khurshid Alam, Chairman, Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) recently met the Pakistan Prime Minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani to discuss the ongoing problems of livestock smuggling out of the country into neighbouring Iran and Afghanistan.
‘We have a very porous boarder and we believe that we lose up to half a million cattle a year through smuggling,’ Alam told Leather International. ‘We had a meeting with the Prime Minster in March and he assured us that he would look into this problem,’ he said.
Alam said that he had been told that the authorities in Pakistan had seized five trucks containing smuggled cattle at the boarder on one day in late March and that the PTA was happy with the recent government intervention on the smuggling problem.
The PTA also confirmed that they estimated that around a further million head of cattle were lost in the floods that hit the country in 2010. ‘The devastating flood and the smuggling of cattle have caused severe problems with the supply of raw hides in the country,’ he said.
Pakistan was the focus country at the APLF this year. A total of 80 companies attended forming one of the largest national pavilions at the show.
