Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has assured that the government would not pass any legislation in relation to the Customs without discussing it before hand with customs officials.
Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
He gave this assurance in Parliament on Friday following trade union action launched by the Customs officials which commenced last week, resulting in operations getting crippled and the country losing billions of rupees in revenue.
The Customs trade unions has resorted to the trade union action after Finance Minister had repeatedly said that he was ‘busy’ to meet them to discuss the new Customs Act, which resulted in the agitated workers launching trade union action.
However, the All Ceylon Customs Services Union on Friday called off their trade union action after Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake had finally given them an appointment to discuss the upcoming Customs legislation. The meeting is scheduled to be held on Tuesday.
Earlier, the trade unions said that they were not happy with Karunanayake’s decision to bring in a new Customs Act, and instead called on the Government to amend the existing act.
Siri / September 25, 2016
These lunatics thieves in customs, island revenue and excise making ha ho and big cry not for the country or people to keep their old ways of corruption to enrich themselves. They even going to Mahayanakayas and Cardinal to prolong their thieving ways to keep the people in poverty. It was heard they were deliberately damaging the container scanning machines to find ways to get money from the importers and exporters.
Government wants to modernize the systems to plug the revenue loss to the country due to corruption in these main revenue collection agencies of the country.
When digitized and IT is introduced there going to be hardly any person to person contact, all could get their work done on line, like modern day banking. This save money, time and effort and boost the productivity and income of all concerned.
If the country to move ahead in the world and provide better life for the people, it and people have to change, and go along with the way the world is going. One couldn’t have modern and better country with thosa kadai systems, style of managing and administration of the people. All have to change for the better, it has and should be done by any government whether Yahapalanaya or JO or JVP.
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jim softy / September 25, 2016
These lunatics thieves in customs, island revenue and excise making ha ho and big cry not for the country or people to keep their old ways of corruption to enrich themselves. They even going to Mahayanakayas and Cardinal to prolong their thieving ways to keep the people in poverty. It was heard they were deliberately damaging the container scanning machines to find ways to get money from the importers and exporters.
Don’t you know Ranil wicramasinghe has a history of supporting theives. Maithripala is living with theives.
They are just manoevering to thrive as politicians and they don’t have any desrie to be dare devils and change the corrupt society.
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eldorado / September 25, 2016
Siri, I agree with you.
All these strikes and Union action by everyone and sundry is the death of SriLanka.
Today every Tom Dick and Harry wants to strike for whatever reason, thereby throwing the people and the Country into complete disarray and chaos costing the Country in millions of rupees.Customs, Doctors, Bus men, Railways, Bankers, CEB, Teachers,Nurses, Attendants,Water board, et al.
During the previous ten years woe be unto any of them if they went on strike or for that matter spoke about a demand; they would be promptly visited by a White van and that would be the end of the story. It just goes to show that too much of freedom is not a good thing for people who do not know what their responsibilities, obligations, and duties are and would rather focus on their facilities, rights and privileges irrespective of who they trample on.
Sri Lanka will find it impossible to progress in this set up. The Govt needs to find a way round these disruptive elements. How did the South East Asian Countries deal with similar situations ? Maybe we can take a leaf out of their books.
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H K Seneviratne / September 25, 2016
Sorry, my comment below should on the article captioned “New Customs Bill. So I resent it below under the correct caption.
“It is high time that we explore the possibilities of either modifying or completely do away with the abhorrent reward. According to unconfirmed sources that the every year rewards had been much more than what was earned by the state and the revenue earned by custom Officers is not subject to income tax! Though the scheme aims to influence officers to crack down the defaulters it would be ridiculous when the scheme results in a situation where the earnings of officers responsible in implementation surpass the government earnings. It would be absurd to continue this scheme which is manipulated by customs offices using the criminal liability under the law for their personal corrupt practices. The end result seems that custom offices either receive bribes or impose takes a share the reward!!This has to be abated.
I recall Ranil W when he was the prime Minster in 2004 had the idea of creating a” Revenue Collection Authority” bringing Customs, Inland Revenue and Excise . However this was shelved due to opposition of trade unions and also his office was short lived to see the light of implementation of his idea.
We don’t know whether this was the revival of the same idea or a modified version of it since the laws are being drafted in close-doors by “experts”.
What we the general public gathers unofficially is that the proposed “new Act” consolidates all previous amendments so far made to Customs Ordinance and also modifies the system of penalties and rewards etc. No wonder why the Custom Officers are up in arms against the changes.
We are yet to see whether the perennial sensitive issues surrounding custom administration are changed in line with the International Convention on the Simplification and Harmonization of Customs Procedures simplifying customs procedures to facilitate trade, transparency etc and in recognition of the approach in WTO would be adequately addressed in this new Act or whether the exercise would succumbed to pressures of privileged set of corrupt rouges.”
H.K. Seneviratne
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shankar / September 26, 2016
the customs is a national disgrace.It is one of the worst in the world when it comes to bribery.There is no doubht that reforming it is long overdue.
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rew / September 26, 2016
Expect nothing from RW, all crooks were given safe passage on the night of Jan 8th 2015/early morning Jan 9th 2015
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