HM Custom’s ‘feeling’ major cut in budget – Wade Smith
Speaking exclusively to Virgin Islands News Online, Mr Smith said the border protection agency has had to adapt with the now limited resources at their disposal.
“By doing more with less you have to become more creative and be more effective. You don’t have time to make any mistakes, you don’t have time to correct them, you have to be spot, less time for error,” Mr Smith said, adding that in the past HM Customs was able to do more with a little more resources.
“Now we don’t have, [and it’s] not that we wasted those resources, we don’t have the amount of resources we had in the past so we have to be more strategic.”
‘Feeling it’ collectively
To make what they have work effectively, Mr Smith said that all the arms of HM Customs perform the functions of any area at any time. “So if we are short in one area then we just re-allocate our resources to that other area to help out so I wouldn’t say that any one arm is struggling. I would say that collectively we are feeling it.”
Automated Headquarters
Meanwhile, Her Majesty’s Customs is expeditiously chasing after the full establishment of a ‘Customs Automated Headquarters’ to improve its operations.
“Once the Headquarters is fully outfitted then we will have a central unit for the processing of entry documents electronically submitted to Customs,” Mr Smith explained.
In the current situation, according to the Customs boss, the department is operating electronically about 40% – 50% but when completed a 100% system operations is anticipated.
“By doing that we would be freeing up more officers to do the type of inspections that we spoke of about, auditing functions, more inspections, whether it’s by container examinations…. Vessels examinations officers would be doing more officer type work with the full implementation of the Customs Automated System,” said Mr Smith.
He was referring to the massive crackdown operations which have been filtering out defaulting charter companies, captains, agencies and persons acting on behalf of agencies.
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