… Calls for duty shift for officers
The Publicity Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA, Chief Chima Idika has said that despite the reforms introduced in the Service by the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi in less than two years, nothing has changed when it comes to officers’ attitude to work.
Idika who disclosed this in an interview with our correspondent recently in Lagos, stated that Customs officials including the junior ones, don’t come to work until it is 11.00am. He however, exempted officers who mount guard from the pack.
“Heads of units don’t come to work until 11.00am and why they are doing this is because there is no shift in customs job. There should be shifts in customs work. I don’t know why they have not evolved that style of an officer working for eight hours and goes home, another person takes over his position. The port is meant to work for twenty four hours but customs is crippling it.
“The port ought to work for twenty four hours but what we have is one officer will be the releasing officer, he will stay there to release until he is tired and once he is tired, that day closes. You are supposed to access any part of the port at any time. There must be an officer there to listen to you. Just like the gate, the CPC, they have starting and closing time.
“Why don’t you have shifts so that an officer will work for eight hours, close for the day and another officer will take over and continue from where he stopped? But one person will be at a position, that’s why they resume late to work.
“There should be shifts in customs work. If there are shifts, there will be easy flow of goods, trade facilitation will be enhanced. It should not be one person doing everything”, he stated.
Speaking on the attitude of Customs officers to stakeholders, Idika who is also the Managing Director of I-DSAM Nigeria Limited, who opined that there were two ways to that, observed that most of his colleagues do not know the job hence the reason the new executive of ANLCA was trying to organize a training session for them to know their rights.
He said, “If you come to my office, this is tariff, this is the explanatory note, this is the index. The essence of having these books is, when I have an argument with an officer, I will go and read my books to know whether that officer was right or not. If I know he is right, I will approach him in a different way. But if I am right, I will stand on my feet. But what happens in this our industry is that most times, officers are hard on people because you have deliberately violated the rules and you are claiming right.
“So, if you know you have broken the rules, you would better go and sort it out before it escalates. You can’t have brand new product in the container and you claim it is used. Then, when customs sees it and insists on giving you DN, you will start saying that the customs are hard. No! Let’s do the right thing. If I do the right thing, I don’t think any customs officer has the right to stop me. But most of our people don’t declare what they have.
“There is this instance of a grinding machine that is powered by an engine. We had an issue with customs over that. They insisted the grinder is separate from the engine powering it, that they fall under two different classifications. We then had to escalate the matter to the Controller and brought our video to show the Controller and the Controller ruled in our favour, not because we are officials of ANLCA, no! But because we know the books.
“I came here, I read the books and saw that when these two items are combined in a container, it is 5 percent duty but when you carry them separately, one pays 5 percent while the other pays 10 percent. That is what people don’t know.
“It’s just like this fan now, this fan is a 20 percent item. If you bring this fan – the blade, the engine, the pipe in one container, if all these components are inside one container, it pays 20 percent. But people will go and bring it and pay 5 percent and call it fan parts. But it’s a complete fan you are bringing. But when you put these blades separately and the engine separately in another container, same with the pipes, what you are bringing is parts.
“Do you know why it is 5 percent? Government gave that incentive so that people can assemble them here, by so doing, create job opportunities for our people. In the tariffs, there are things call parts and there are things they call complete.
“Most of our people will leave where they are supposed to classify their goods, even from the explanatory note, only for them to classify it another place. When you do that, a smart customs officer will hold you and you will either play ball with him or he gives you a DN. Most times, most of the DN is not about undervalue, most of the DN stems from wrong declaration.
“If your item is 10 percent or 20 percent item and you classify it as 5 percent and when they catch you, they will raise DN based on 20 percent and you will say that they are being hard on you. And there is no container that pays the same rate of duty. But sometimes, I hear that customs says that a forty footer should pay at least seven to eight million. It’s just to help the agents but in helping us, we should help them too.”
Photo: Chief Chima Idika, Publicity Secretary, ANLCA, Apapa Chapter.
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