Lack of skilled manpower: customs department marking containers despite advanced scanners at ports

Customs department, despite having advanced multi-dimensional scanners at ports, is marking maximum containers for physical examination, due to lack of skilled manpower. This was disclosed at the first meeting of FPCCI standing committee on Customs at Federation House, here on Friday. The agenda of meeting was to discuss the problems and reasons of port congestion and delay in examination and clearance of goods.
The meeting, which was chaired by Arshad Jamal, was attended by Customs officers, officials from KICT, PICT, QICT, SAPT and the members of All Pakistan Customs Agents Association (APCAA). The terminals' officials said that major of ports in the said region were using mono-type scanners for cargo clearance but all terminals operating in Pakistan installed advanced multi-dimensional scanners on the directives of customs department, following the clearance of Nato/Isaf and Afghan Transit cargos.
Although the terminals have installed advanced scanners, which are capable to scan containers from both vertical and horizontal directions, the customs department instead of using them with maximum capacity is marking majority of containers for physical examination, due to lack of confidence and inadequate skilled manpower, they informed and termed it as one of the major reasons for port congestion.
Moreover, they said that import volume was witnessing double-digit growth on year-on-year basis and if no measure was taken to handle the growing trade volume, the port congestion issue would become exacerbated. Terminals' officials also urged the customs department to evolve procedure for the disposal of hundreds of PVC scrap containers as the same, which were lying at terminals for long, was creating port congestion. Earlier, Arshad Jamal chairman FPCCI standing committee on customs requested the customs department to issue auction schedule every month in order to facilitate the trade.
He said that terminals were ready to shift Full Release (FR) containers to private warehouse and urged the Customs department to issue directives in this regard and also allow the trade to submit FTA certificate to the designated cell before appraisers' endorsement after paying duty and taxes. Moreover, he said that terminals despite charging US 7 dollars as scanning fee was unable to provide said facility to the trade, causing to put excessive financial burden of demurrages and detention for delayed containers clearance.
He also requested the terminals to avert the shipping companies for unloading Afghan Transit cargos at ports till the borders remained sealed to avoid port congestion. Later, the Customs officials said that they supported the proposals to shift the unclaimed containers to off-dock terminals and assured to discuss the said proposal with high-ups in FBR. Moreover, they said that Customs department made 200 new appointments and the issue of inadequate workforce would be resolved in a couple of week. They also lauded the efforts of APCAA for evolving proposals to resolve the long-lasting issues of the trade.