• Anxiety Over Customs PAAR Builds Up

CG Deploys ACG's To Commands

 

The palpable fear in the folds of the Nigeria Custom Service over the imminent breakdown of its newly-launched Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) has continued, even as more senior officers of the service were yesterday deployed to commands in Lagos to monitor field operations.

Shipping Position Daily gathered at two of the biggest commands in Lagos; that is, Tin Can Command and the Apapa Command that a team of six Assistant Comptrollers General were deployed to Lagos by the Customs Comptroller General; Dikko Abdullahi Inde in order to ensure that officers are closely monitored and supervised so as not to allow the PAAR fail.

The deployment of the senior officers comes less than one week after the Customs hierarchy acknowledged that the scheme is not working as planned and that it was encountering major challenges.The Customs had acknowledged last week that more than 99, 300 Risk Assessment Report (RAR) were transferred to the Customs by the ‘sacked’ three destination inspection service providers and this is already causing congestion in the issuance of fresh PAAR on imported goods.
Similarly 13 officers were sacked at Tin Can command for alleged irregularities in the implementation of PAAR

The image maker of the Apapa command, Mr. Emmanuel Ekpa told our correspondent yesterday shortly before a closed door meeting with the delegation that, the delegation of six Assistant Comptroller Generals were divided into two groups to hold meetings with officers at Tin Can port and the Apapa port.

He said, "the meeting is all about the PAAR and the backlog we are having, the essence is to discuss how the process can be fast-tracked, it is to oil the process and make it work better" Ekpa told our correspondent.

As at the time of this report, a source at the Tin Can also confirmed that a meeting was ongoing between the delegation and examination and inspection officers of the command.

Our correspondent gathered that another meeting is set to hold today (Wednesday) at the zone ‘A’ headquarters of the Customs in Lagos.

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