Business as usual at Gwadar Port, but not for everyone

A view of Gwadar's famous Mulla Fazul Chowk, a roundabout once famous for political gatherings. (AN photo by Hassam Lashkari)

• Port is functional and ‘completely protected’ from the virus, authorities say
• CPEC operating company says food aid reached Gwadar to support residents amid lockdown

KARACHI: Despite the coronavirus outbreak, activity at the Gwadar Port in Balochistan is underway and the first major shipment kickstarting the port’s operations is expected to arrive next month, officials confirmed.
One of the deepest seaports in the world, Gwadar is part of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project.
“All operations are underway in the port with all protective measures being taken,” Shabbir Ahmed, a spokesman for the Gwadar Port Authority (GPA), told Arab News on Thursday.
He said the port is functional and “completely protected” from the virus, as no single case has been reported in the city of 138,000, where partial lockdown has been imposed as precaution.
Balochistan government spokesman Liaquat Shahwani said the province had taken measures to protect the port from the virus to make the business go on as usual.
“We have taken measures for keeping the city safe from coronavirus. Quarantine and isolation wards have been setup to deal with COVID-19 cases,” he told Arab News.
The port is preparing to receive its first shipments for Afghan transit trade next month under the 2010 Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA), the prime minister’s adviser on commerce, Abdul Razak Dawood, confirmed in a series of Twitter posts recently.
He said shipments of sugar, fertilizer and wheat will be transported in sealed trucks from the port to Afghanistan.
“The move will also jumpstart port operations in Gwadar Port and create the necessary eco-system for another big seaport of Pakistan,” he said.
While big business at the port is unaffected by the pandemic, Gwadar residents are suffering from the lockdown imposed to protect the mega-project’s operations.
“We are completely safe and no case of coronavirus has been reported. We want to cooperate with government as the disease will affect us all, but if the lockdown goes on without any help from the Pakistani and Chinese governments, it will affect majority of the city’s population,” Ghulam Hussain, president of the Gwadar Traders Association, told Arab News.
“Although the district administration has allowed limited opening of shops, the lockdown has already sent many people jobless,” he said.
According to the company that leads CPEC operations, China Overseas Pon Holding Company, it had sent a cargo ship with food relief for the city.
The company’s coordinator for social welfare projects, Baba Dadullah Yousuf, said the Gwadar district administration has been distributing the aid. Gwadar Port Authority’s Ahmed also told Arab News that 25 organizations have been involved in delivering food rations to villages.
Locals, however, say that although they have heard about the food shipment, they have yet to see it.
“We have heard that some food items have arrived in the port, but we are still waiting to receive them,” said Dad Kareem, a local fisherman. He told Arab News that to survive members of his community had no choice but to defy the lockdown and ban on fishing at sea.
Yet, the spokesperson of the Balochistan government said that authorities were looking after the needs of people everywhere including Gwadar.
“The government is extending every possible help to people in the lockdown situation,” he said.
Yousuf, representative of the Chinese company, said the process of distributing 34 tons of food items was still going on and soon around 1,200 deserving families would benefit from it.