DUSHANBE, January 11, 2014, Asia-Plus — Although Tajikistan and China reached an agreement on a year-round operation of the Kulma border-crossing checkpoint on the Tajik-Chinese border in Gorno Badakhshan, administrations of Tajikistan’s Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO) and Kashgar District in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have agreed to impose some restrictions on passing through the crossing during winter period.
An official source at the Ministry of Transport of Tajikistan (MoT) says the decision to impose some restrictions has been made following cold weather and heavy snowfalls reported in the Kulma area.
“Therefore, the crossing will work three days in January (21. 22, and 23), six days in February (11, 12, 13, 25, 26, and 27) and six days in March (11, 12, 13, 25, 26, and 27),” the source said.
We will recall that Tajikistan and China reached an agreement on a year-round operation of the Kulma border-crossing checkpoint in December 2011. Under the agreement signed in Dushanbe on December 29, 2011, a status of international crossing was given to the Kulma border-crossing checkpoint.
Since May 1, 2008, the Kulma crossing operated every day, except weekends, from May through November.
Opened in 2004, the Tajik-China trade route runs from Khorog, the capital of Gorno Badakhshan in southeastern Tajikistan, over a high-altitude plateau and then down into China, where it ends in the city of Kashgar, 700 kilometers away.
As conditions are so tough at the Kulma border crossing, which is located on a mountain pass 4,400 meters high, until May 1 2008, the gateway had stayed open only 15 days out of every month, while from November through April it had been closed altogether.
