A German team of aviation experts is coming to Bangladesh today to audit the security standards at the international airport in Dhaka, two days after German national carrier Lufthansa has stopped carrying direct cargoes from Bangladesh on security grounds, sources have said.
Like the UK experts, the German team will conduct the validation under the regulations of the European Union (EU), said a source at the Biman Bangladesh Airlines. Germany’s civil aviation authority has already sent a letter to the Biman Bangladesh Airlines in this regard.
The German ban took effect on Sunday. It comes only three months after the UK imposed a similar ban on direct cargo flights from Bangladesh on security reasons. Earlier in December last year, Australia did the same.
Both the bans are still in place, even months after a British security company took charge of the cargo screening at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
On Sunday, the Federal Aviation Authority of Germany said in a notice that “because of information provided by our law enforcement authority and intelligence services” all cargoes and mail consignments originating from Bangladesh “pose a risk to aviation security”.
This means all cargo flights from Bangladesh bound for Germany must be rescreened at a third-country airport.
The latest ban will have serious consequences as Bangladesh exports nearly $5 billion worth of goods to Germany a year — 95 percent of them garment items. A significant quantity of goods from Bangladesh is carried to Germany by air. Exporters are already taking a hit, Germany being the second largest export destination for Bangladesh.
Exporters said they could not send any goods by air on Sunday as the Lufthansa flight left the airport without carrying the scheduled 80 tonnes of cargoes, almost all of them garment items.
The Lufthansa operates one flight a week from Bangladesh and carries garment items. No other airlines have direct flights to Germany from Bangladesh.
Contacted, Rashed Khan Menon, the civil aviation and tourism minister, said he was not aware that a German team would be in town to audit the airport security situation.
“I don’t know yet about the [expected] arrival of experts from Germany. We have improved security at the airport in Dhaka. Still, they [the UK, Australia and now Germany] are auditing it on their own,” he told The Daily Star by phone yesterday.
“This is not a good development at all as Germany is our major export destination for garment items. Air freight is the last resort to meet the strict deadline of the international retailers,” said Asif Ibrahim, vice-chairman of Newage Garments Limited, a long-time apparel exporter to Germany.
“We will lose our business partners in Germany if we fail to ship goods on time. The delay in air shipments will render a serious bad impact on our business. The government must act quickly to resolve the problem,” Ibrahim said.
The business side apart, Bangladesh will face an image crisis on the international scene because of any ban on security reasons, he added.
Saiful Islam, the immediate past president of Bangladesh German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BGCCI), agrees.
“This is a very important time for us. We need to export goods in bulk quantity ahead of Eid,” said Islam, also managing director of Picard Bangladesh, a leather goods manufacturing company.
The government must take the issue of the ban seriously, he added.
Siddiqur Rahman, president of Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said, “We are hopeful that the German expert will be satisfied with the security arrangements in place.”
The validation or audit is a computer programme which mainly assesses an action, decision, plan, or transaction to establish that it is correct, complete, and being implemented as intended, and also delivering the intended outcome.
The EU standard validation is known as ACC3 regulations. Under the ACC3, introduced in February 2012, all air carriers carrying cargo or mail from non-EU countries to the EU must be registered as an “Air Cargo or Mail Carrier” operating into the EU from a Third Country Airport (ACC3) by an EU member state based on a valid security programme.
ACC3s must ensure that all cargo and mail carried to the EU is physically screened or have come from a secured supply chain.
Source: The Daily Star
