The Chairman of the Tin Can chapter of ANLCA, Ojo Peter Akintoye in blue shirt and cap and second from the left, to his right is the vice chairman of the chapter, Sonniel Onochie.
Story by Dili Utomi.
It is in a bid to continue to build capacity in line with the international best practices that the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) set up the Task Force and in order to make sure that freight forwarders in their ranks do the right thing by making honest and genuine declaration as well as protecting members. It is also a fact that the Vehicle Identification Number was newly introduced mainly because people have been clamouring for uniformity in the valuation of same items at different ports and terminals and in a bid to find out how the VIN valuation regime has impacted on members over the past one month and also a review of the operations of the Task Force at the Tin Can chapter that the chairman of the chapter met a few days ago with the members of the Task Force.
Members of the chapter.
The chapter chairman, Mr. Ojo Peter Akintoye said that part of what the meeting tried to achieve was to brainstorm on the challenges facing the Task Force and to find ways of tackling them for effective discharge of their functions and the better operational environment for all stakeholders. Mr. Akintoye continued to emphasise the need for the team members to continue to follow the laid down operational procedures in all their daily activities as he noted that the Customs Area Controller of the Tin Can Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, Comptroller Kunle Oloyede is not happy with the compliance level of importers and freight forwarders at the Command.
The chapter chairman said that Customs Brokerage and Freight Forwarding are professional jobs that require training and retraining and therefore members should continue to improve themselves in all aspects of the job as he admonished that they should always study all bill of laden and any other document in other to mentally equip themselves to properly carry out their jobs. He added that understanding the documentation is key in order to master the trade and become professionalised in the system.
Some members of Task Force.
Mr. Akintoye opined that the VIN valuation regime has been able to aid smooth clearance of cargoes in so much as it concerns the 17 digits standard types of vehicles and asked that others that fall outside of these have their rates properly harmonised for effective vehicle clearance.
The public relations officer of the chapter Onome Monije added that the problems that they are facing is with the non standard types of vehicles that come from Europe and Asia and that there is a need for the Customs to eliminate the teething problems that are associated with trying to clear this category of vehicles as the value of the duty to be paid on these are higher and the process of documentation not seamless. She said that the manual process of valuation that subsists on the valuation of these non-standard types of vehicles does not give room for uniformity in values and still opens up the channel for corruption, she wants the management of the Nigeria Customs Service to do everything possible to create complete uniformity in the clearance of same types of vehicles and get it all right.
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