KARACHI: Shahnaz Maqbool, the first female from Balochsitan and a graduate of Harvard University posted as Collector Appraisement West, has said that the collectorate is facing several challenges in adopting new measures to collect more taxes but it is her top priority to increase customs duty, withholding tax, sales tax and other such revenues to help tackle financial problems of the country. Achieving revenue target is the biggest challenge at this time but there are still few months left to meet the year-end targets.
During an exclusive interview with Customs Today, Collector Shahnaz said that the collectorate had achieved more than 60% of revenue target during first eight months (July-Feb) of FY-2016-17. Collectorate’s hard working officials are striving hard to achieve the remaining 40% target in last four months (March-June 2017).
Collector Appraisement West Shahnaz Maqbool said that the collectorate has the best team but there are always few hurdles in the way of early clearance of consignments. To make this process smooth to ease the problems of importers, the officials always tried to work with high efficiency to facilitate importers to avoid charges of demurrage.
“We will make sure in future as well to adopt such measures to keep process of clearance quick and transparent,” she asserted.
Replying a question, Collector Shahnaz said in the past the Collectorate was facing shortage of staff, but now, with the appointment of 4 additional collectors, the collectorate has enough staff to properly manage the work as additional collectors usually worked on operational level.
Talking about under-invoicing issue, she said that the collectorate is suffering considerable revenue lose due to this menace.
“We are closely looking into the matter and trying to fix it. It does not happen overnight, wrongdoers always keep on working on such illegal ways to cheat the customs staff but we will flush them out. Also, we are putting our maximum efforts to avoid rush at terminals,” she said.
Addressing the importers, she said, “It is better to register complaints in written form, instead of making useless noise which is not beneficial for both – the department & importers. I will never compromise on fraud and malpractice. It is my duty to curb frauds by importers and staff members. I hope the importers will cooperate accordingly”.
The Collector said, “The Customs Department is playing a vital role but its good work has always been overlooked by negative role of few black sheep. Our good performance should also be appreciated equally”.
“I always keep a friendly environment at the workplace. My staff is important to me and I always try to solve their problems on priority basis. Together we will take the department to new heights and we will continue this performance,” she added.
It is worthy to mention here that Collector Shahnaz has recently joined Appraisement West Collectorate in Karachi. Hailing from Balochistan province, she is a graduate of Harvard University, US. She is the first woman from Balochistan to work at this very position. She has been serving in the Customs for the last 20 years. She has been working in various Customs collectorates at top positions during her service including Appraisement, Export and Preventive.
