<i>Exports suffer most</i>

Anxiety grips exporters in the port city as timely export of goods becomes uncertain with the beginning of a three-day countrywide shutdown yesterday.
Containers laden with 2,900 twenty-foot equivalent units of export goods remained stranded at 16 inland container depots (ICDs) in different parts of Chittagong on the first day of the hartal, according to officials of the ICDs.
Ruhul Amin Sikder, secretary of Bangladesh Inland Container Depot Association, told The Daily Star that the containers remained stranded even after completion of stuffing of goods as those could not be transported to the port for shipment due to the shutdown.
Almost 90 percent of these export goods are readymade garments, while the rest includes goods like jute products, he said.
Esac Brothers, an ICD located near the port, managed to transport only 30 containers out of 351 to the port yesterday, according to the officials.
But transport of goods could not be possible from the ICDs located at distant places, Sikder said.
On Saturday, the Chittagong Port Authority in a notice urged the ICDs to take assistance from the law enforcing agencies for safe transport of containers to the port.
Sikder said they usually take police escort at the end of a dawn-to-dusk hartal to transport goods in the night time.
“But this time it is a 48-hour hartal, and the situation is very violent elsewhere as police is also being targeted by the hartal supporters,” said the leader of the association.
"Who will take the liability of the valuable goods and covered vans during such violence?"
“We make a meagre amount of profit by stuffing and transporting a container. If a covered van comes under attack, the loss would be worth around Tk 1 crore to Tk 1.5 crore. Why will we take such big risk?”
Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association's First Vice President Nasiruddin Chowdhury also echoed Sikder.
Chowdhury said the Jamaat-Shibir group set fire to an export goods laden covered van in Sitakunda on Saturday morning, which compelled many exporters to cancel plans of transporting goods during hartal.
These failures in transportation would harm the departure schedule of vessels waiting in the port jetties, while some vessels may have to leave the port without loading any container.
Two vessels -- Ocean Arrow and Sinar Subang -- had to postpone their schedule of leaving the port due to the hartal, according to officials at the Chittagong Port.
Exporters also fear to incur a huge loss in case of delay in shipment as they see no hope of any possible end to the current political conflict.