Strike at Karachi Custom House: 100 Customs officials suspended

KARACHI: Work at the Karachi Custom House came to a grinding halt as the staff at the largest custom formation in the country went on a strike. The staff went on strike following the suspension of over twenty low-ranking Customs officials by the administration for alleged collusion with unscrupulous element in trade, and for alleged release of over one hundred containers on fictitious Customs documentation through Port Qasim over a four-month period. According to sources, the protesting custom staff termed the suspension of some of their colleagues unjust because low-ranking officials were posted at the gates of Port Qasim during the period of faulty releases, are being made scapegoats for a faulty Customs system. They said that Customs maintained an archaic system called One-Customs, under which manual declarations of cargo are filed to Customs, after the processing of these documents, the final Customs documents which now bear a huge number of signatures and stamps are presented by the owners of cargo to the terminals for delivery. The delivered cargo is finally presented to the Customs staff at the out gates for verification of the documents and release into economy. Sources said that there is no way of determining if the signatures and stamps on the documents are real, they merely have to rely on the Customs computer operators posted at the gates for the verification of the documentation through PRAL system. Since in all cases the concerned computer personals verified the transactions so the Customs officials had no option but to release the consignments. The affected Customs staff contended that FBR, instead of correcting the faulty system, is taking action against the relevant persons, who reportedly have already left the country, is trying to cover up the incident by proceeding against low-ranking Customs officials and harassing the terminal operator staff. “Unless FBR does not correct the root cause of the problem and proceeds against the real culprits, such events will happen again in the future and powerless, low-ranking officials will continue to bear the brunt for matters beyond their control,” they added.