The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has told terminal Operators to emulate the gestures of the Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) by providing functional scanners at the sea port.
This is coming after several complaints by freight forwarders complained that lack of scanners is hampering the easy clearance of consignments at the port.
The Zonal Coordinator, Zone A of the service, Assistant Controller General (ACG) Aminu Dahiru, disclosed this to newsmen during his working visit to the headquarters of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) in Lagos, yesterday.
He charged the terminal operators to borrow a leaf from FAAN which provided functional scanners at the airports.
“I think terminal operators should be charged for the provision of scanners because at the airport, if you look at the scanners they were provided by FAAN because they are the authority at the airport.
“We are only here to carry out our duties and I am telling you, these scanners at the airport is not only meant for customs operations per say.
He however promised that the scanners would soon be made available adding that he is not sure if the customs will be allowed to manage it.
“So to the best of my knowledge before the end of this contract they will provide scanners, I don’t know what the new arrangement is. I am yet to know whether customs will take charge of this or not to provide procedural issues”
He advised member of NAGAFF to play consultancy roles to their importers as well as excuse themselves from consignments that negate the law of the land.
According to him, the level of experiences members of the association have gathered will make it easier for them to advise the importers on trade laws.
“Let me also appeal to this gathering, I oversee your profession as a very important one. I don’t see you as someone who will only clear goods and hand it over to the importer, because most importers cannot operate without you.
“So you need to be consultants, your advice will go a long way. If you bring out all your ideas, it will go a long way so please see yourselves as consultants as well because many traders cannot operate without you. They can call you to inquire what they need for clearing of cargos”
Speaking earlier, the National President of NAGAFF, Increase Uche told the ACG that there had not been improvements on past experiences of the freight Forwarders despite their complaints to the office of the ACG.
He added that the implication of the failure to address the issues still leads to alerts which inhibit trade facilitation.
Uche’s words, “We still see the prevalence of some of those issues we raised when we visited your office some months back. But we feel that we are all in the learning process.
“There is nothing difficult in getting the system run the proper way we want if all of us decide to do the right thing. All the challenges we mentioned earlier has to do with who controls who of which the implication is the incessant alert, we have not seen any improvement on that” he concluded.
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