ISLAMABAD, Oct 13: The government has decided to import around 50,000 tents from India in order to provide temporary shelter to quake victims in Muzaffarabad and northern parts of the NWFP.

Textile Minister Mushtaq Ali Cheema told Dawn on Thursday that the Indian government had been told that Islamabad would import all the surplus tents for providing shelter to the earthquake victims at the earliest.

The decision was taken at Thursday’s cabinet meeting which was presided over by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.

The minister said that the cabinet also decided to waive off 25 per cent customs duty, 15 per cent sales tax and 6 per cent withholding tax on the import of tents from any country.

Mr Cheema said the private sector had also been asked to import tents duty-free from any country, including India, China, Taiwan, Turkey and South Korea, to meet the increasing demand in the wake of the large-scale destruction of homes by the quake. The minister said that according to rough estimates displaced and shelterless people in AJK and northern parts of the NWFP would need between 0.2 and 0.25 million tents as the winter season had already set in.

Initially, he said a plan had been drawn up to establish a tent village in Islamabad for the affected people. But the plan was later shelved after some of the quake victims signalled their unwillingness to leave their villages and towns. So the government decided to establish tent villages closer to the affected areas. Mr Cheema said the government had also requested foreign countries to donate tents to Pakistan as part of their assistance packages.

The minister said that local manufacturers of tents and tarpaulins had been asked to increase their production to meet the domestic demand.

Currently, the total number of tents produced annually stands at around 17.5 million tents. Most of these tents are exported, while the remaining units are used in the domestic market.

In reply a question, the minister said that it was not possible to outlaw the export of tents. Since local exporters had already made commitments with their foreign buyers, he said it wasn’t possible for them to cancel their orders.

However, he said that government has directed local manufacturers to increase their production of tents from the current 50,000 to overcome the shortage of tents in the domestic market following the massive destruction of houses in the earthquake.