Smuggled mandarins sold at Burimari land port
At Burimari land port in Lalmonirhat's Patgram upazila trade in smuggled mandarins is brisk. At least three thousand sacks of the fruit from India and Bhutan illegally cross the border daily, according to locals, to be sold to fruit traders at low prices. The mandarins are sold in the open, with customs officials and law enforcers strangely inactive.
“I can purchase a twenty-kilogram sack of mandarins at the border for around Tk 800,” says Lalmonirhat fruit trader Delowar Hossain. “These foreign mandarins sell for up to Tk 65 per kilogram in the local market. At the border I have to pay about Tk 125 to a smuggling syndicate for each ten kilograms of oranges.”
“We facilitate market connectivity in the land port area for the smuggled foreign mandarins,” says one syndicate member Jamal Hossain. “These mandarins are delivered to the border by Indian and Bhutanese truck drivers.”
One such driver from Bhutan, Gonesh Singh, 46, says orders are paid for in advance for mandarins to be delivered to Burimari. Locals report that law enforcers and in particular customs officials are well aware of the illegal trade.
It's not only that the Bangladesh government loses revenue from the smuggling, but the quality of the fruit is unknown. “Plant quarantine officials don't test smuggled fruit,” says the deputy director of the plant quarantine office at Burimari, Abdul Quader. “Customs will take measures to prevent this illegal trade.”
Burimari's assistant commissioner of customs, Rezvi Ahmed, says a syndicate has been conducting the illegal trade in foreign-sourced mandarins. “We took steps to close the illegal market only yesterday,” he says. “If the syndicate tries to operate here again we will take legal action.”
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