LAHORE: The Collectorate of Customs Appeal has disposed of 189 appeals involving duty and taxes of worth Rs 84 million. This was stated by Collector of Customs Appeals Asif Mehmood Jah while talking to Customs Today here.
Explaining nine months performance of the collectoarte, he said that 189 appeals were filed involving Rs 83.93 million during the nine months of financial year 2015-16.
He added that as many as 141 cases were decided in favour of the government agencies while 48 appeals were decided giving relief to the private parties. He added that the cases were decided in accordance with the Customs Law without any discrimination between the government and private parties.
To a question, he said that he preferably kept in view the speedy justice and revenue recovery and wave of fine and penalties which normally parties accept and don’t consider going to higher platform for further prosecution. Asif stated 95 percent of the cases which he decided were mostly upheld by the appellate tribunal and higher forums.
He informed that the Collectorate of Appeals entertains appeals on cases decided by assistant and deputy collectors of collectorates including Customs Appraisement, Preventive, Lahore, Multan, Symbrial and Faisalabad.
Dr Jah besides being a competent customs officer is also an acknowledge social worker upon whom the President of Pakistan has recently conferred with Sitar-e-Imtiaz for the acknowledgement of his services in rehabilitating the ailing humanity.
In answer to a question as how does he strike balance between his profession and the social works, he responded, he never felt difficulties in discharging his professional duties instead he always gave extra time to his collectorate and the testimony of the claim is that all the backlog appeals have been disposed and currently dealing in with day to day filed appeals.
Routinely, the cases of misdeclaration and seizures of medical equipment and cars are filed before the collector of appeals which are decided in accordance with the provisions of Customs Act, he said, informing that on an average 30 appeals are filed with the collectorate every month.
By law cases are to be decided within 120 days, however, the collectorate mostly decided cases within 30-day time period, he stated.
