A MEDIA report says the cargo village at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport is failing to accommodate the rising volume of export-bound goods, piling up losses on suppliers as they are struggling to ship merchandise in time. The cargo village has a daily storage capacity of 400 tonnes of dry cargo, way lower than 1,200 tonnes arriving at the airport to be shipped by national and international airlines. About 800 tonnes of goods are exported through the air routes every day while much of it remains left in sheds outside the airport storage facilities regularly exposed to growing theft.
The problem has become bigger as garment producers and exporters are getting additional orders after the reopening of western markets following slowdown of Covid-19 pandemic and market chain started functioning. But the additional handling capacity of the cargo flights at the airport is not expanding overnight. There is only one explosive detection system operating, one is dysfunctional at the airport as against four, and the dog squad’s scanning capacity is also limited. As a result most chartered cargo flights are leaving with around half load to keep their flight schedules unimpaired.
The other thing is that freight charge has almost doubled. The cost of air shipment for garments has shot up to $6.50 per kg for Europe, $11.50-$12.00 for USA and Canada, and $3.50 for Far-East and Middle-East because of container shortage. The rates are expensive to keep exports competitive and shipment orders timely.
We would say the business stake is too big but the airport cargo handling is just around 50 percent. The third terminal at the airport now under construction will build a new cargo village to tremendously upgrade cargo handling capacity to 5 lakhs tonnes, but for it to be operational one has to wait until 2025. We understand that any remedy is not expected overnight and yet the airport management must work hard to expand its capacity and handling efficiency. It is not quite difficult to add three new explosive detection systems or add additional scanning devices at three entry points. It is also not too big a problem to hire minimum technical manpower to run the technical devices to raise the cargo handling capacity. Sooner such an improvement is implemented the better.
