Some re­lief may be on the way for thou­sands of peo­ple who have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing de­lays with the clear­ing of car­go from the Ex­press Con­sign­ment (couri­er bond) of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

This comes as the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion an­nounced a change to their ap­point­ment sys­tem from Mon­day (Ju­ly 26), with an in­crease in the amount of car­go to be cleared dai­ly.

Since the start of the lat­est lock­down mea­sures, one couri­er com­pa­ny told Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed, Cus­toms had re­duced ap­point­ments for clear­ing of items.

The com­pa­nies were placed on an al­ter­nat­ing sys­tem and al­lowed to clear pack­ages every oth­er day on a fixed sched­ule.

How­ev­er, over the past three weeks, there have been ad­di­tion­al de­lays, caus­ing couri­er com­pa­nies to send out no­tices to their cus­tomers ad­vis­ing them to ex­pect their pack­ages to take longer to be cleared.

In the let­ter sent by Cus­toms to couri­er com­pa­nies on Thurs­day, the di­vi­sion out­lined the changes to the sys­tem, stat­ing, “Ef­fec­tive Mon­day Ju­ly 26, 2021, there will be an in­crease in the num­ber of car­go re­porters processed on a dai­ly ba­sis at the EC (Ex­press Con­sign­ment) Area. This in­crease will be re­flect­ed in the dai­ly ap­point­ment ros­ter.”

The di­vi­sion said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to “de­group” ship­ments would be that of couri­er com­pa­nies, who are al­so re­quired to pro­vide ad­e­quate staff for the clear­ing of goods.

“It is the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Car­go Re­porter to en­sure that the con­sign­ments are trans­ferred to the area des­ig­nat­ed for the pro­cess­ing of Ex­press Con­sign­ments for the pub­lished ap­point­ments. Pri­or­i­ty shall not be giv­en where an ap­point­ment is missed due to the fail­ure of the Car­go Re­porter to de­group or trans­fer the con­sign­ments or any pay­ment is­sues with the Car­ri­er,” the let­ter stat­ed.

The own­er of one couri­er com­pa­ny said if this new sys­tem is im­ple­ment­ed, it would bring re­lief to thou­sands of peo­ple who have been wait­ing for their pack­ages to be cleared.

In an email sent to Guardian Me­dia on Thurs­day, there were more com­plaints about the slow, in­ef­fi­cient sys­tem.

“Since the start of the sec­ond lock­down, cus­toms has been work­ing at an ex­tra slow rate, ar­guably the slow­est ever. I have been wait­ing for some goods to be cleared from cus­toms up to 22 days…some­times even longer,” one busi­ness own­er said.

He said the slow process had be­come a ma­jor bur­den on small busi­ness­es and was very ‘in­con­sid­er­ate.’

He at­tached a doc­u­ment show­ing the de­liv­ery of an on­line pur­chase to a couri­er com­pa­ny on June 30.

The item was shipped to Trinidad and To­ba­go on Ju­ly 6 and ar­rived in the coun­try on Ju­ly 9.

On Ju­ly 13, it was list­ed as “de­layed in cus­toms.”

On so­cial me­dia, con­sumers who have been wait­ing on their items to be cleared al­so vent­ed their frus­tra­tions, with one post­ing, “If Jeff Be­zos mak­ing it to SPACE and back in 11 mins, you could tell me what cus­toms do­ing tak­ing 11 busi­ness days to clear ppl (peo­ple) goods in Pi­ar­co?”

The com­ment was shared many times, with oth­ers agree­ing and al­so ex­press­ing their frus­tra­tion.

An­oth­er user said he had been wait­ing 14 days for his pack­ages to be cleared.