A committee has started preparing the list of the identified smugglers and hundi traders of Chittagong after finalising that of the Sylhet division.

This was disclosed at the 36th meeting of the National Smuggling Resistance Committee held yesterday in the conference room of the home ministry with State Minister for Home Affairs Lutfozzaman Babar in the chair.

Babar asked the law enforcers to tighten security in the border areas to check smuggling and hundi trading.

The meeting was informed that law enforcement agencies conducted 36,000 anti-smuggling drives in six divisions of the country during May, June and July, and arrested 1,472 people besides recovering 551 firearms.

Babar directed the law enforcers to strengthen intelligence activities to recover illegal firearms and explosives and to stop smuggling of those through borders.

The meeting decided to set up six more scanning machines, including one at Internal Container Depot (ICD) at Kamalapur in Dhaka and one at Benapole land port while the rest four at the container depot of Chittagong sea port to run the port activities effectively.

It is alleged that the foreign trucks, which enter the Bangladesh territory in the name of carrying goods, are being sold out. Due to this, the government is being deprived of a huge amount of revenue.

Two separate committees have been formed to fix the limit of access of the foreign trucks to the Bangladesh territory.