Following last week assertion by service providers that the Nigeria Customs Service lacks the expertise and the discipline to maintain and operate the scanning machines currently in use for Destination Inspection [D.I], the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders [NAGAFF] has said that the service providers should stop lobbying for the extension of their contract with the government.
Following last week assertion by service providers that the Nigeria Customs Service lacks the expertise and the discipline to maintain and operate the scanning machines currently in use for Destination Inspection [D.I], the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders [NAGAFF] has said that the service providers should stop lobbying for the extension of their contract with the government.
National President of the freight forwarding association, Mr Eugene Nweke told Shipping Position Daily, in Lagos on Monday that it will be shameful on the part of the Nigeria Customs Service if they are not ready to take over destination inspection from the service providers, even as he said that stakeholders should access their performance towards the operations of scanning and other technicalities involved.
The NAGAFF boss said that customs training institutions in the country are 100% Information and Communication Technology [ICT]-compliant to impact on officers and men of the service.
Nweke reiterated that men of the customs can assess Risk Assessment Report [RAR] within six hours, pointing out that the customs should use the platform to experiment with the destination inspection.
He said that the NSC has advanced in the area of capacity building, urging the service to take over from the service providers namely: COTECNA, Global Scansystem Limited and SGS.
According to him, “the contract of the service providers will come to an end on the 31st of December 2012 and we expect them to fizzle out ‘’.
‘’By the time we experiment with the customs and they fail, we might require their service by bringing them back. I don’t think it is right for the service providers to be giving us excuses that customs are not ready to take over from them, the service providers should not lobby for Nigerians rather they should stay clear as from 2013’’.
‘’It will be the greatest embarrassment to this country that Nigeria Customs Service after seven years of all the effort in revenue generation, training and re – training of personnel and to the extent that Comptroller General of Customs is also the vice president of World Customs Organization [WCO] and we are talking about taking over or not, then it is a shame.’’
‘’I believe that if the customs takes over from the service providers, they will even do better’’, the NAGAFF president said.
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