New user fees to come with new status for Customs
Published:Wednesday | January 12, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Mark Titus, Business Reporter
The Jamaica Customs Department is heading for a new rite of passage.
Come April, it is scheduled to start a one-year transition from a department of the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service to a more autonomous executive agency within the ministry.
Whereas major staffing and financing issues are now determined by the Ministry and its chief executive, the financial secretary, these are expected to gradually become the responsibility of a chief executive officer of Jamaica Customs, which will be a semi-autonomous body.
Current head of Customs, Danville Walker, is expected to ease into the new CEO role reporting to the financial secretary.
He spoke with Wednesday Business about some of the changes he foresees with the impending restructure.
The fees structure of the entity is expected to feature early in the changes. In addition to duties collected on behalf of the Government, fees are to be levied and used to fund day-to-day operations at Customs.
"We have varying number of fees currently and the whole idea as an executive agency is to charge at economical value for the services that Customs provides, and use those funds to run Customs and keep it modern," Walker, the Commissioner of Customs, said in an interview.
It was not ascertained what new services would be added to generate the new fees.
It is Customs' job to ensure that the right amount of taxes are paid on the cargo flowing through Jamaica's ports. That requires overseeing the 15 million kilogrammes of cargo flowing through the airports, and the 3.6 to 5 million wharf tons of cargo through the seaports, as well as the processing of inbound travellers - more than two million of which come through the airports annually.
In the new scheme of things, Customs will be expected to present an annual budget to Parliament, which if approved, will form the basis for the agency to receive monthly cash flow from the ministry via the Accountant General.
"That system will not change in the short term, but in the medium term, Customs will be able to fund itself if our proposal is accepted," Walker said, of the plan now before the Cabinet.
Customs will continue to pay over the previous day's collection to the Ministry of Finance and the public service on a daily basis.
The Customs head is hoping that under the executive agency model, the head of the entity will be given full rein over the workforce. At present, he said, the direct influence of the Commissioner of Customs is limited to workers at the lower tiers.
"If I am to get a worker above tier 4, I have to convince the ministry of finance," Walker pointed out.
"I still cannot understand that you would employ someone to run an agency, but someone who knows nothing about your staff is able to make such decisions."
Even so, staff deployment, particularly some transfers at Customs in recent times, have been controversial with some staff assigned to the deposit and reconciliation department, mockingly referred to as "never never land" as it is thought that persons are sent there as a form of punishment and given little to do.
Without staff
The dreaded department is now without staff as all 1100 of the Jamaica Customs' members of staff are fully engaged in other areas.
"The measures taken at that time were necessary for all to understand the standard that is required, but I am now confident of the people I work with (and) my staff is now showing a sense of commitment," said Walker.
The commissioner said he already has his management team in place to take on the challenges of the coming changes, and is banking on each member playing a key role in the development process.
"What I have done is put together my team - a team that shares my vision of what Customs should be, and what we are building is a Customs strong on border protection, strong on freight facilitation, strong on customer service and most of all efficient."
"I think we have a cadre of young people who are yearning for a chance to prove themselves (and) my job as commissioner is to empower them and give them the opportunity."
"My team questions why things are so and now brings to me solutions that they think would improve the way we do business, it is no more me asking the questions," he noted.
Walkers spoke of what he said have been major improvements since he took office.
"When I just got here, customs officers were sharing computers, so you would not be able to hold individuals accountable, so that became a self defeatist strategy."
Solving the problem
His infrastructure and technology team has since solved that problem.
"The team sought to improve the connectivity of the various parts of customs, so we spent some money to change a lot of equipment."
Border security, the head of Customs said, remains one of the department's biggest concerns. The upgrade of the agency's information and communications technology system and equipment is considered a vital component of the modernisation project being undertaken.
The system, the commissioner said, will equip Customs with the relevant data on inbound passengers and cargo prior to their arrival, which will assist the entity in improving its service delivery.
"Not everyone that is checked needs to be," he said.
"We want to be able to identify the good clients and treat them as such, and then we would be able to focus our resources on those people who spend their time devising ways to avoid paying duties."
The department, he noted, has been increasingly successful in clamping down on those who seek to fraudulently evade customs, with help from the Financial Investi-gation Division (FID).
"The FID is one of the places, where we get the biggest support on our operations (and) there are changes being made there now, but we need to deepen that relationship."
It is hoped that the FID will, for example, take the burden of handling court proceedings from Customs.
"At present, we catch you and carry you to court ourselves, but we need to establish a relationship, where we catch you and hand the culprit over to the FID to deal with the court proceedings."