KARACHI: Exporters are facing great hardships due to late arrival and early departure of customs staff. Exporters raised this issue to Customs Today but after the passage of eighteen days matter is still unresolved and now the situation is getting worse day by day.
During visit to Export Processing Zone exporters complain that they are facing great hardships for clearance of their consignments, because customs staff’s late arrival is a routine matter. They said that due to this practice, consignments take long time to get cleared, and after clearing few consignments they prefer to clear the remaining consignments next day. Entire customs staff deputed to clear the consignments is solely responsible for this delay.
Chairman Kamran and Co Lutufullah Niazi while talking to Customs Today has said that our major orders are terminated due to this delay and we suffered a loss of Rs 2.26 crore. He further said that if you estimate this loss annually this amount stands at Rs 5 billion.
Talking about leather consignments one exporter Malik Naushad has said that that after waiting so long, customs staff asks for unnecessary documents. He said in recent past when I experienced same situation and customs staff cleared my consignments after long delay I received the termination order from my client and we bore a loss of Rs 1.23 crore.
We write many letters to the chairman of Export Processing Zone but all in vain, one exporter Shafqat Imran has said that there is no computer operator present at the Export Process Zone while unauthorized persons (lappoo) are found sitting on the seat of computer operators.
We find a lot of files and bundles on the tables when we asked the person about the status of computer operators, he simply replies that we are not computer operators and don’t know about them, they might be on leave.
Shafqat Imran said that we tried many times to bring this situation in the notice of high ups but we did not get any positive response in this regard. When Customs Today tried to contact customs clearing staff they did not give their point of view and only said, “we are here only to work”.
Exporters appealed to high ups to take notice of this situation on urgent basis and do the needful in this regard.
