Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of Com­merce, Bal­dath Ma­haraj, says while the ASY­CU­DA sys­tem is func­tion­al, there re­mains a back­log of goods at the ports that con­tin­ues to frus­trate busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Call­ing for a more ef­fi­cient sys­tem to be put in place, Ma­haraj told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that cham­ber mem­bers as well as their bro­kers have re­port­ed that once cus­toms en­tries are screened, it still takes an ad­di­tion­al three to five days to se­cure a bay for the ex­am­i­na­tion of con­tain­ers.

He added that re­quests for con­tain­er in­spec­tions at busi­ness premis­es are al­so de­layed by three to four days af­ter the ap­pli­ca­tion is sub­mit­ted.

“These de­lays are pri­mar­i­ly the re­sult of the Comp­trol­ler’s cur­rent di­rec­tive man­dat­ing 100 per cent phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of con­tain­ers en­ter­ing the CES (Con­tain­er Ex­am­i­na­tion Sta­tion). This in­cludes bulk items such as cook­ing oil and bags of rice, goods that would not typ­i­cal­ly re­quire in­ten­sive scruti­ny,” he ex­plained.

Ma­haraj said while the need for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and prop­er cus­toms over­sight are sup­port­ed, the cham­ber be­lieves there must be a more bal­anced ap­proach.

He said the cur­rent sys­tem is caus­ing se­vere back­logs, in­creas­ing op­er­a­tional costs and sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­rupt­ing the sup­ply chains of small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es across the coun­try.

Ma­haraj not­ed that two weeks a group of cham­ber heads and stake­hold­ers met to dis­cuss this grow­ing con­cern, adding, “We are uni­fied in our po­si­tion that ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion is need­ed to re­store ef­fi­cien­cy to the port sys­tem with­out com­pro­mis­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

He said the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber re­mains com­mit­ted to en­gag­ing with the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try and oth­er rel­e­vant stake­hold­ers as the goal is to find prac­ti­cal, sus­tain­able so­lu­tions that up­hold both com­pli­ance and eco­nom­ic con­ti­nu­ity.

“We will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the sit­u­a­tion close­ly and pro­vide up­dates to the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as de­vel­op­ments oc­cur,” he added.

One busi­ness­man told Guardian Me­dia that de­lays at the port are an “aged old prob­lem” but hoped that with the ad­vent of up­dat­ed tech­nol­o­gy sys­tems there would be more ef­fi­cien­cy and that in­spec­tions would be done quick­er.

When the ASY­CU­DA sys­tem was dis­rupt­ed on June 30 fol­low­ing a wa­ter leak at the Cus­toms House, Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza, Port-of-Spain, the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said this high­light­ed the need for im­proved in­fra­struc­ture re­dun­dan­cy and busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity plan­ning with­in the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and across all crit­i­cal Gov­ern­ment ser­vices.

The cham­ber had rec­om­mend­ed that au­thor­i­ties in­vest in back­up sys­tems and con­tin­gency pro­to­cols to main­tain op­er­a­tional con­ti­nu­ity or en­sure swift restora­tion if pri­ma­ry in­fra­struc­ture is af­fect­ed.

It stat­ed that en­hanc­ing the re­silience of cus­toms in­fra­struc­ture is nec­es­sary to pro­tect the na­tion­al econ­o­my from fu­ture dis­rup­tions.