Some couri­er com­pa­nies are gen­uine­ly wor­ried that some of their cus­tomers, even those who heed­ed their warn­ing and or­dered their on­line gifts ear­ly, will be emp­ty-hand­ed come De­cem­ber 25—Christ­mas Day. This is af­ter some com­pa­nies told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that they are cur­rent­ly wit­ness­ing an un­prece­dent­ed back­log at ports of en­try, main­ly the car­go ware­house at Swis­s­port Com­pound in Pi­ar­co. And they are blam­ing the de­lays on of­fi­cers of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion.

The own­er of one com­pa­ny who asked for anonymi­ty for fear of vic­tim­i­sa­tion from Cus­toms Of­fi­cers said, “It’s phe­nom­e­nal this year. We have over 30 ship­ments backed up. I have done every­thing I can do from Mi­a­mi. I have spent close to US$15,000 to $20,000 week­ly in Mi­a­mi to have peo­ple work­ing around the clock to get peo­ple’s pack­ages in on time. I even en­gaged ship­pers com­ing in­to Trinidad in­stead of just deal­ing with Caribbean Air­lines and Amer­i­jet to en­sure pack­ages reach in time for our cus­tomers.”

The com­pa­ny said the cus­tomers be­ing af­fect­ed are not last-minute shop­pers but rather those who heed­ed the an­nu­al in­dus­try rec­om­men­da­tion to en­sure all on­line pur­chas­es are done be­fore De­cem­ber 8 so that there is enough time for the pack­ages to ar­rive at the Mi­a­mi-based sky­box ad­dress and then to this coun­try.

The own­er told Guardian Me­dia that the sit­u­a­tion is cur­rent­ly dire, and they are con­cerned about dis­ap­point­ing their cus­tomers.

“If it is we have on­ly 10 days un­til Christ­mas, and we have 30 ship­ments and you on­ly in­tent on giv­ing us one ship­ment per day, do the maths in that. And these 30 ship­ments in ques­tion here are on­ly ship­ments where we gave cus­tomers a cut off date of the 8th of De­cem­ber. So, this is not what ar­riv­ing these days now,” the own­er said.

Guardian Me­dia was al­so in­formed that the al­leged un­prece­dent­ed de­lays were a re­sult of changes in op­er­a­tions at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Lev­el.

A source close to the sit­u­a­tion said the old pro­to­col had one Cus­toms Ex­am­i­na­tion Of­fi­cer as­signed per ship­ment but now two of­fi­cers are tasked with that job.

“An of­fi­cer screens the man­i­fest and an­oth­er ex­am­ines the pack­ages, this has dras­ti­cal­ly re­duced the num­ber of ship­ments that can be ex­am­ined at any one point in time. For ex­am­ple, where 12 of­fi­cers would have done 12 ship­ments si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, now on­ly six ship­ments can be done si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly,” the source said.

To com­pound is­sues there are in­ad­e­quate staff dur­ing this peak sea­son and in­stead of spot checks, of­fi­cers are now in­sist­ing that every pack­age in every ship­ment be opened, ex­am­ined and closed.

There are al­so re­ports that Cus­toms and Ex­cise Of­fi­cers have al­ready made it clear that they will not be work­ing the week­end be­fore Christ­mas.

At­tempts to con­tact the Act­ing Comp­trol­ler of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Mean­while, Paul Pan­tin, the di­rec­tor of couri­er com­pa­ny eZone, said the is­sue goes be­yond the de­liv­ery of Christ­mas gifts.

“Our busi­ness is pred­i­cat­ed on ex­press ship­ments and a large part of our clien­tele use us for their busi­ness-to-busi­ness needs. We bring in life sav­ing equip­ment, we bring in test­ing strips, we bring in oil and gas parts and ser­vice re­quire­ments for the rigs so any de­lay we have in our usu­al ser­vice im­pacts on the abil­i­ty of those oth­er busi­ness­es who de­pend on us to be ef­fi­cient,” Pan­tin lament­ed.

Web Source chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Lin­coln Ma­haraj was slight­ly more em­pa­thet­ic and said this is par for the course at this time of year.

“De­lays at this time of year are in­evitable. It’s too much car­go that rush­es in and every­one wants their car­go all the same time,” Ma­haraj said.

He de­scribed it as “typ­i­cal chan­na bot­tle syn­drome.”

“Every­one is work­ing as hard as they can, but with more car­go comes more scruti­ny be­cause it’s in in­stances like this where things can slip through caus­ing more prob­lems down the road. So un­for­tu­nate­ly, it’s a nec­es­sary evil,” Ma­haraj con­ced­ed.

How­ev­er, the pres­i­dent of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) Michael Anisette be­lieves these de­lays can be avoid­ed if the coun­try is se­ri­ous.

“As I con­tin­ue to say, we need to think about in­tro­duc­ing new mod­els that speak to ef­fi­cien­cy, that speak to us­ing tech­nol­o­gy so that we can make peo­ple’s lives eas­i­er. My ma­jor con­cern con­tin­ues to be that while we talk about all the IT plat­forms, we are on­ly talk­ing about it. We are not putting in place the mech­a­nisms that are nec­es­sary,” Anisette said.