No more apples for PoK, say J&K traders

Claiming to have been cheated by buyers in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, fruit merchants in Jammu and Kashmir have stopped sending apples to PoK.

Traders say that they did not get a single rupee for the consignments sent to the PoK last year within days of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's call to resolve issues affecting trade.

Fruit merchants in Sopore say that not only were they cheated in fixing the price, but the buyers in PoK also did not pay the Rs 14 lakh (Rs 1.4 million) that they had arbitrarily decided as the price for the supplies they received.

The fruit merchants' grievance is that the government is doing nothing to help them recover the dues and hence the only course of action left to them was to stop supplies of apples to traders in PoK.

"We have no communication links to ascertain the fate of our goods in PoK. . .  nor is there any banking facility to insist on receipt of payment before the goods are dispatched," a trader said.

A Srinagar daily quoted Fayaz Ahmad, president of Kashmir Fruit Growers and Dealers Association, as saying that fruit merchants had approached the state's governor, the chief minister, and even the prime minister some time ago, but did not get any response.

Traders suspect that their money has been held up as some vested interests want cross-LoC (line of control) trade to fail.

The daily quoted a trader as saying that he had spoken to some truck drivers during a trip to Salamabad in PoK and they told him that each box of apples fetched about Rs 2,000. The bills received by traders in J&K, however, showed prices ranging from Rs 400 to Rs 500. "The government does not allow telephone calls across LoC to enable us to check actual market prices in PoK," the trader said.