Latest update December 11th, 2024 1:33 AM
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Chaos at city wharf for barrels, boxes
Chaos at city wharf
– shortage of Customs officers blamed
It was chaos at the Laparkan wharf yesterday as families scrambled to clear boxes and barrels shipped from overseas.
While the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) has said that systems have been put in place to ease the expected delays for the Christmas season, as at 15:00 hrs, several were still waiting since morning for their items to be examined.
Meanwhile, harried Customs officials attempted to get a handle on the crowd at the Lombard Street facility.
“I come here since eight this morning and I just finished clearing my things. This is highly frustrating. I don’t know why they can’t hire more Customs people,” an upset Richard from Diamond said.
“After going upstairs and downstairs, upstairs and downstairs and all around, I deh here still waiting,” said an Enterprise woman who said she was waiting for 90 minutes for a Customs Officer to examine her barrel.
While one Laparkan official admitted that the system is “slightly faster”, the shortage of Customs officers to inspect the packages and barrels was an acute problem.
The Lombard Street facility currently has four examining officers who are responsible for checking boxes and barrels, containers, clearing cars and other related duties.
Laparkan is among the busiest of the wharves in the country.
Yesterday, for example, Laparkan was estimated to have seen over 200 transactions for barrels and boxes. While paperwork takes an average of 60 minutes to complete, the bottleneck to the entire clearance of items has to do with examinations by Customs.
“We are being blamed for the delays,” one Laparkan official claimed.
To deal with the crowd, Laparkan has extended its opening hours until 19:30 until the holidays are over.
Before, employees of the shipping company would have taken a number of the Customs documents to the officials to be checked off to speed up the process. However, every single customer is being asked to visit the Customs office there, personally.
“This is also contributing to the delays.”
Outside, one man threw his documents to the ground and told his family that he was fed up and was leaving.
Recently, GRA announced that it was waiving the examinations of barrels for the season as part of the measures to ease congestion at the wharves.
However, following the discovery of ammunition in a barrel, the entity said that it was reverting to the old system but had put measures in place to ease the clearance.
Kaieteur News was told by families that the current system is a nightmarish one.
“When we come, we gat to go to Laparkan in the front office. After sitting and waiting, they locate we documents. Then we got to pay a fee at the cashier.”
After that, the customer is then directed to the bond area where someone has to locate the barrel or box that was sent. Then a Customs officer has to be found for the items to be examined.
“After this, we gat to then wait for them to calculate the taxes and duties. We then gat to take this to the Customs Officer at the back to check de documents again.”
It does not end there. After that, the customer has to join another line where the taxes will have to be paid. The receipts are then taken to a clerk to prepare a gate pass. This will involve being part of another line.
Then it is back to the bond area for the documents to be recorded and the goods released.
“I don’t think I want to go through this again. I wasted the entire day here,” one Georgetown resident said.
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