Customs dual role dooms it to fail

As in the past two decades, the Customs bureau topped a recent poll of dirtiest government agencies. Despite two people-power revolts against corruption, the image of Customs officers living in mansions and bristling with jewelry has not changed. It does not matter who sits in Malacañang; Customs remains corrupt.

To say it’s deviant is an understatement. Customs is the only office under the Civil Service Commission where an officer facing multiple cases before the Ombudsman remains in his post. On the rare occasion that a Customs man is suspended for infractions, he easily gets himself reinstated or even promoted. “Hao-shiao”, or non-organic personnel performing official functions and allowed access to restricted areas, proliferate. Alongside them at the headquarters in Aduana, Manila, and the district offices are a horde of fixers, pseudo-journalists, and other shady characters. All are masters of the underworld art of usurping authority.

Customs officials too are not above usurping authority. Of late they have taken to adorning themselves with military ranks and insignias. Bestowing such ranks to Customs cops up to colonel is unauthorized, yet the CSC has not acted against it.

All government agencies run on a monthly operating expense. Not Customs. It is able to function without such funds because its divisions and sections rake in so much cash under the table. Enigmatic is how Customs spent its P1.3-billion budget allocation this year from Congress.

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Customs is so schizophrenic about its mission. It is expected to be a revenue raiser and a law enforcer. It cannot be both, though.

To succeed in duty collecting, Customs must play ball with brokers and importers, some of whom are also smugglers. Whenever Customs asserts its anti-smuggling role, the brokers-importers simply stop transacting, thus bringing down tariff payments. The national government depends on daily revenue collections to sustain its bloated budget. So, it cannot afford a prolonged standoff with importers-cum-smugglers. Customs just slinks back to its task of collecting.

 The modes of outright and technical smuggling have remained the same since the ’80s. But lately there was a dramatic change in the sharing of illicit profits. Brokers who used to rake it in because of links to Customs bigwigs are now playing second fiddle. This is because importers have reduced the broker’s fee to clear each container. Dealing directly with Customs insiders, the importers also have upped a bit the “intelihensiya”, or regular bribe. The bottom line is that importers now get the lion’s share of smuggling incomes.

Desperate to raise collections, Customs recently tried imposing higher tariff rates. As usual the brokers-importers stopped operations. Customs reverted to the “intelihensiya”. Only a massive replacement of officers and the system can save Customs.

Sources say the “intelihensiya” increased with the entry of interior department and police officials five years ago. The legal cover for it was the repeal of their memo of non-intervention with the defunct Economic Intelligence and Investigation Bureau.

The Presidential Anti-Smuggling Group has taken over some of the EIIB’s old tasks. But it has not come of age. Customs prefers to keep its own powerful enforcement division, under a deputy commissioner, to head off any anti-smuggling drive other than its own.

An excuse for this is the bureau’s membership in the World Customs Organization. The international body sets standards and training programs for 173 member-governments in anti-smuggling law enforcement. Being the agency designated by Malacañang to represent the Philippines, Customs clings vainly to the role of enforcer. But it has never succeeded as such; so smuggling goes on unabated. As for the PASG, it has started demanding its share of the “intelihensiya”.

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The increased number of Filipinos working in Guangzhou, China, in part necessitated the opening of a Philippine consulate general there. But the Philippine Overseas Employment Authority has been slow to react to the development. It has no field office there to issue its required OEC (overseas employment certificate). Filipinos have to travel to the nearest POEA office, which is in faraway Hong Kong, to secure the document for P100 apiece.

Maybe the POEA should not even require overseas Filipino workers to buy that piece of paper to begin with. It’s just another racket that encumbers Filipinos who work abroad because there just aren’t any jobs in the homeland.

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