Hyacinth Chinweuba
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), says it is unethical for its retired officers to engage in direct cargo clearance business and have threatened to revoke the license of such officers and men.
Indigenous Freight Forwarders (Licensed Customs Agents), had sent complaints and petitions to the Comptroller General of the service, Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) lamenting that Foreigners and Retired Customs Officers, have taken over their jobs, leading to the closing of several clearing and forwarding organizations with attendant loss of jobs affecting the youths.
According to the report, the retired officers and foreigners have taking it as undue advantage of the cordial relationships that exist between them and their colleagues in the service, thereby giving the Service a bad precedence.
The Customs Service is currently considering the most appropriate step to adopt to weed them out of the business, as it is putting in place options that would achieve the best result from being hurt.
It was disclosed that one of the options considered is to bar the retired officers and men from having an easy access to the Customs Processing Centre (CPC), which houses the Automated System for Customs Data ASCUDA++, the Information Communication Technology ICT hub that spread across all the Customs formations for cargo clearance.
A second option, which has been summed up is to ensure the Licence of such officers and men is revoked whether the document belongs to them or not, as confirmed by our source in one of the Commands to serve as a deterrent to others.
Stakeholders have in recent times argued that retired officers and men, who has got firsthand information about the operational technicalities of cargo valuation, other clearing procedures might compromise the systems, even with existing relationship with high level of respect, involving the serving colleagues to short change government on loss of huge revenue.
In reaction to the development surounding complaints by Stakeholders, the National Public Relations Officer of the service, Deputy Comptroller Joseph Attah, said that the office of the CGC has been inundated with several complaints and petitions by Freight Forwarders alleging that retired officers and men have taken over their jobs.
He noted that the service is taking its time to address the prevailing circumstances now that the issue, mostly evolve around the service retired officers and men and that a decision most appropriate would be reached, saying that the management of the service was not comfortable with such complaints including petitions and would address them in due time after investigation is concluded, he assured.