According to a Recorder Report, Rawalpindi's Model Customs Collectorate recently caught a consignment of mobile phones along with accessories at the Islamabad Airport while being smuggled in as unaccompanied baggage. A conscientious customs officer resisted his superior's instructions not to examine the baggage, says the report, foiling a smuggling bid which would have cost the government an estimated four million rupees in unpaid duty and taxes.
Phone sets in Pakistan belong to the category of non-essential luxury items hence the import of cellular phones is subjected to heavy regulatory and customs duties. Which acts as an incentive for smugglers, and for unscrupulous customs officers to collude with them to make quick money by waving off, in exchange of greasing of palms, consignments containing cellular phone sets as well as other luxury items.
A simple solution would be to take away the incentive from smugglers through duty reduction. Doing so, though, would further inflate our already overblown import bill, and therefore is a worthless option. Besides, smuggling is not restricted to phone sets alone, neither is it an activity peculiar to our situation. It is a common but serious problem and needs to be addressed in a holistic manner.
First of all, a standard operating procedure needs to be in place at all the ports of entry, including the seaports where most of the import activity goes on. It is pertinent to recall here an incident from last May when the customs staff at Port Qasim and Karachi Port Trust staged protest demonstrations after the Federal Board of Revenue decided to suspend 25 customs officers. They were accused of having cleared, without checking, some 220 containers through the Customs Care System over a 9-month period from October 2006 to July 2007. Interestingly, the suspended men did not deny the charge, but offered the defence that the supervisory staff had stopped them from checking and verifying the consignments for their contents.
Whosoever was to blame for that gross negligence at the cost of the national exchequer, the incident clearly indicated that a proper system of checks was missing, which allowed for shifting of blame between the checking and supervisory staff. The story in the present case is not much different. Here, too, the inspector responsible for scrutiny has complained that his supervisor pressured him to release the consignment without verifying its contents. Given the level of wrongdoing commonly associated with the customs staff, both at our airports and seaports, the government must review the existing system in order to remove its flaws.