Customs urged to modernize, improve procedures

The Bureau of Customs has reiterated the prohibition on nepotism among personnel while the Department of Finance urged the country’s second biggest tax-collection agency to fully modernize its processes and systems.

“The role of the BOC is more than just improving revenue collection to provide government the wherewithal to fund public investments. We expect the bureau to continuously improve its procedures and processes to facilitate trade. This is important in building an investments-led growth that will produce employment opportunities for our people,” Finance Secretary Carlos G. Dominguez III was quoted by the DOF as saying during the BOC’s command conference last week.

For Dominguez, the BOC needed to transform itself into a truly modern bureaucratic organization to better facilitate trade, fight smuggling and bar the entry of illegal drugs and terrorists from the country’s borders.

The BOC, meanwhile, issued Customs Administrative Order (CAO) No. 4-2017 last month, which laid down the antinepotism rules in the agency.

Signed by Dominguez and Customs Commissioner Nicanor Faeldon, CAO 4-2017 stated that “all appointments made in favor of a relative [within the third civil degree of consanguinity or affinity] of the appointing or recommending authority, or chief of the bureau or office, or persons exercising immediate supervision over him, are hereby prohibited.”

The BOC ordered that appointments of individuals in a confidential capacity or position must be reported to the Civil Service Commission.

However, the BOC order said the prohibition on nepotism would not apply to persons employed in a confidential capacity.

Also, the antinepotism rule did not cover individuals who, after their appointment to any position, got married to a colleague in the bureau, the BOC said. —BEN O. DE VERA