AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

The Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) has joined couri­er com­pa­nies in lament­ing what they are call­ing the in­ef­fi­cien­cies at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

On Thurs­day Guardian Me­dia high­light­ed the con­cerns of sev­er­al couri­er com­pa­nies who are gen­uine­ly wor­ried by what they are de­scrib­ing as in­or­di­nate de­lays pri­mar­i­ly at the Swis­s­port bond in Pi­ar­co. Some com­pa­nies said the set­back is enough to cause se­ri­ous anx­i­ety for peo­ple who or­dered Christ­mas gifts on­line, even those who placed their or­ders since the last week of No­vem­ber. Since pub­lish­ing the sto­ry Guardian Me­dia has at­tempt­ed to get a com­ment from the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning. Nei­ther have re­spond­ed to our calls or mes­sages.

How­ev­er, DO­MA took in­ter­est in the sto­ry and has called for the Min­is­ters of Fi­nance and the Min­is­ter of Trade to take bold ac­tion to res­cue the econ­o­my and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty from this ‘de­ba­cle.’

DO­MA re­vealed that the “in­ef­fi­cien­cies” at Cus­toms and Ex­cise were ex­ac­er­bat­ed fol­low­ing an op­er­a­tional change dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“The sit­u­a­tion be­ing de­scribed is, in our es­ti­ma­tion, not re­lat­ed to an in­crease in sea­son­al pack­ages or on­line shop­ping but the re­sult of a pol­i­cy of in­spec­tion and charges on all pack­ages in­tro­duced in 2020. The couri­er bond is slow and in­ef­fi­cient all year long. This was sup­pos­ed­ly to pro­tect the rev­enue of the coun­try, and al­so to pro­tect the bor­ders from il­lic­it mer­chan­dise, guns, and drugs. It has pe­nalised le­git­i­mate busi­ness and con­sumers in a dras­tic way. A pack­age that takes 4 days by couri­er from Japan can take up to 5 days from Pi­ar­co to Port-of-Spain,” DO­MA said via me­dia re­lease.

The Port-of-Spain busi­ness group be­moaned that it had made sev­er­al rep­re­sen­ta­tions at the high­est lev­el to ad­dress the in­ef­fi­cien­cies at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion but it seems that hun­dreds of their hours com­mit­ted to this cause have gone to waste.

“We do not want to give the im­pres­sion that we are con­demn­ing the Cus­toms di­vi­sion, but we feel cer­tain that a failed pol­i­cy has been im­ple­ment­ed that is caus­ing harm to the econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” the re­lease added.

DO­MA sought to re­mind the pub­lic that there was a time when the Cus­toms di­vi­sion had the well-be­ing of the lo­cal econ­o­my in mind.

“Sad­ly, that seems to have been sac­ri­ficed in the in­ter­est of mus­cle flex­ing and the ex­am­i­na­tion of every sin­gle pack­age in­clud­ing worth­less items and doc­u­ments that come in­to the coun­try. Charges are ap­plied on al­most all pack­ages, which have no val­ue in­clud­ing mi­nor items, a nut and bolt, mu­ti­lat­ed sam­ples with no val­ue and oth­er worth­less items,” the busi­ness group com­plained.

Us­ing ex­am­ples to il­lus­trate what it called the “unique in­ef­fi­cien­cy” in Trinidad and To­ba­go, DO­MA said, “a lo­cal couri­er com­pa­ny af­ter com­plain­ing to its head of­fice in the USA re­peat­ed­ly about unique dif­fi­cul­ty in T&T was ad­vised by the head of­fice that they would test the sys­tems about which the com­plaints had arisen. The USA head of­fice sent 12 couri­er pack­ages to 12 Caribbean des­ti­na­tions in the east­ern Caribbean. Each pack­age con­tained a lo­go give­away ball­point pen which was val­ued at US$1.50 and used as a pro­mo­tion­al item. The of­fice in the USA re­port­ed even­tu­al­ly that 11 of the 12 pack­ages passed through the cus­toms process with­out charges or de­lays ex­cept in 1 coun­try, Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

DO­MA said adding to the sense of hope­less­ness is the fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion if stake­hold­ers speak out pub­licly on the is­sue. But it main­tained that some­thing must be said be­cause the lo­cal econ­o­my is suf­fer­ing as a re­sult of these de­lays.

“No one is sug­gest­ing that every pack­age be al­lowed free en­try but what we are say­ing is that the back­log that is de­feat­ing the very no­tion of door-to-door ser­vice is long over­due for cor­rec­tion. Scan all pack­ages and set a min­i­mum val­ue thresh­old for couri­er pack­ages that can be al­lowed through the sys­tem. This will give the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion more time to prop­er­ly as­sess oth­er pack­ages on which val­ue can be ob­tained and re­duce the de­lays that are dam­ag­ing the T&T econ­o­my,” DO­MA rec­om­mend­ed.