Customs not to take action against clearing agents without intimation

KARACHI: The Pakistan Customs has agreed not to take penal action against clearing agents without intimation in those cases where importers found defaulters of short payment, official documents made available to The News revealed on Friday.
The agreement was reached in a meeting between Muhammad Saleem, collector, Model Customs Collectorate (MCC) Appraisement – West, and members of the Karachi Customs Agents Association (KCAA) headed by Khurram Ijaz, general secretary of the association, held recently.
The collector has been informed that a number of licences of clearing agents have been suspended without prior notices in those cases where short payments from importers were reported.
The collector has been urged that the licences should not be suspended without giving opportunity of being heard. The collector agreed that the authorities in such cases would first serve notices to defaulter (importer) and clearing agent prior to taking further action.
The issue of unnecessary delay in grounding of containers and examination at port came under discussion during the meeting. The association highlighted the problems of late grounding and feeding of examination reports.
The members said all the examination staff was working over 12 hours a day even on off days, including Saturdays and Sundays, which helped reduce backlog at the Karachi International Container Terminal (KICT).
Furthermore, it was informed that all the examination staff had been provided tablet PCs to enter reports in the system from the examination yard. The association requested the collector to ensure goods declaration forwarded on the same day for expeditious clearance.
The association pinpointed the issue of laboratory tests where the Customs staff marked consignments time and again in those cases where no discrepancy had detected.
The collector agreed with the problem and directed that only assistant collector / deputy collector concerned would decide about sending the samples for the lab test.
He said the previous public notices in this regard would be reviewed to bring improvement in the system.
The association raised the issue that appraisers were calling unnecessary documents, NTN copies of importers, exporters whereas such documents were already in the WeBOC system. In this connection, the collector issued directives to ensure that all the relevant documents were uploaded at the time of filing of the goods declaration. The collector also directed additional collector to ensure the status of importers NTN was visible to principal appraisers and appraisers for verification with the active taxpayers list (ATL) issued by the Federal Board of Revenue.