Customs collector of Cebu reassigned

CEBU, Philippines — Starting Monday, Elvira Cruz will no longer sit as the district collector for the Bureau of Customs in Cebu.

She is among 16 customs officials nationwide who will be affected by a reshuffle of employees implemented by the newly-installed BOC Commissioner Isidro Lapeña.

Elvira Cruz will be reassigned to the bureau's Compliance Monitoring Unit. Aside from Cruz, four other collectors and three operation officers will be reassigned to the same unit.

“Yes, effective Monday, Collector Cruz is no longer the district collector of Cebu,” confirmed Vernie Enciso, chief of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Service in Cebu and Tacloban.

In a document obtained by The FREEMAN, BOC Cebu operation officer IV Wivina Pumatong has been appointed to sit as officer-in-charge with Cruz now reassigned.

Seven other operation officers and acting chief/deputy collectors will be designated as OICs in various ports in the country.

Meanwhile, Senate President Pro Tempore Ralph Recto praised the order of Lapeña to freeze the BOC's guidelines on tax-free packages sent home by OFWs “as a blow against red tape.”

Recto said “common sense won” when Lapeña suspended on October 3 the requirements for balikbayan senders to fill up an information sheet, submit a photocopy of their Philippine passport, and purchase invoices of goods to be shipped.

Amid OFW outcry, Lapeña has pulled out Customs Administrative Order 5-2016, which tightened controls on balikbayan boxes, and CAO 04-2017, which aligned balikbayan privileges with RA 10683, the Customs Modernization and Tariff Act and ordered their review.

Recto welcomed the review as an opportunity to purge the current guidelines of “bureaucratic overreach and a wrong interpretation of the law.”

“It is clear in the CMTA, and in the debate records of the House and the Senate, that an OFW can send home, tax and duty-free, a balikbayan box valued not more than P150,000 three times a year,” Recto said in a statement. —/JMD (FREEMAN)