In the Service of the Commmunity

Pakistan’s Worst Enemy is Pakistan Itself

Red Tape, Bureaucracy, Old Lakeer-Ke-Fakeer Munshi culture in government is still more powerful than President Pervez Musharraf, PM Shaukat Aziz or CBR Chairman Abdullah Yusuf.
Immediately after the devastating October earthquake in Pakistan last year I quickly manufactured and donated about 2000 special small emergency White LED flashlights in my USA factory and Fedex’d them to Islamabad. They got there in 3 days but were held up by CBR/Customs for almost 3 weeks before being released to NRSP, the NGO I work with. Then in November 2005 I made a major mistake of shipping material for 10,500 more White LED flashlights worth $150,000 to my labor intensive assembly set up in KEPZ Karachi Pakistan to use Pakistan’s own work force. I literally stopped all my own production work to urgently manufacture and ship these to the earthquake area from Karachi. I personally supervised the final packaging of these 10.500 flashlights in end of December 2005.
It is now 8 months. I am donating these $150,000 worth LED flashlights Free. The 10,500 flashlights are still rotting in ready-to-ship cartons in my Karachi KEPZ facility. Since January 2006 I have tried every legal process to get these released for either earthquake areas or other poverty alleviation programs. I have failed miserably.
Some Reasons:
• I cannot export into Pakistan from KEPZ Karachi due to 80/20 rule even if it is for Pakistan’s own poverty alleviation programs
• For earthquake no NGO is allowed to receive goods without the government assigned special Officer who is 10 layers too deep to reach.
• The established and qualified NGOs need special permission from CBR office for every shipment of goods they intend to receive.
• NGO submits all necessary documents to CBR. CBR looses them conveniently.
• NGO submits same documents again and they are told documents are incomplete. Submit additional information and so on.
• Even if I meet the 80/20 EPZ rule I am asked to pay duty on goods manufactured in Pakistan and donated free.

By: Pervaiz Lodhie (email: plodhie@ledtronics.com)

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