Silchar, Sept. 3: Authorities in Mizoram have banned the despatch of permitted goods from neighbouring Myanmar across the land-locked state’s 404-km-long border fearing possibilities of dumping of contraband and arms under the guise of imported goods.
As a result, the bustling trade centre at Zokhuathar in Champai district now wears a desolate look. The buyers and sellers stopped coming to the Rs 8-crore market since August 20, when the superintendent of police issued the order banning trade for two months.
The market complex, part of the trade centre at Zokhuathar, has grown since June 2003 when the border trade route, stretching from India to Kalay town in Sagaing division of Myanmar, was built by engineers of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and the Myanmarese army.
Official sources in the border trade department of the state government today confirmed that this ban had come as a body blow to the traders of both these countries. Business of Rs 100 crore is transacted here every year. While Indian produce like papaya, passion fruit, ginger and oranges as well as handicraft, medicines and engineering goods find their way into Myanmar, goods such as rice and gems from Myanmar as well as those from China, Korea and Taiwan are traded at the international centre at Zokhuathar.
Police sources at Champai town said they imposed a ban on this flourishing border trade based on intelligence reports that drug cartels based in Myanmar and Thailand’s Chiang Mai area have been flexing their muscles to cart drugs like opium and heroin into Mizoram.
The Indo-Myanmar border in Mizoram is one of the favourite corridors for the entry of such contrabands into India. Apart from drugs, illegal arms from Chin and Kachin rebels are also smuggled across this border.
As a result of this ban, goods are piled up on the Myanmar-India road on the bank of the Tio.
Sources in Aizawl today confirmed that godowns in Myanmar’s border areas are now chock-a-block with undespatched goods. The border traders in Myanmar pay kyat 2,000 to 5,000 as rent for the storehouses everyday.
