Concerns raised about staff readiness ahead of new customs legislation

As the South African Revenue
Service (Sars) gears up to
introduce more control and
clarity around the country’s
customs processes through
new legislation, questions
have been raised around staff
readiness and training.
Jean Pool, a senior customs
consultant with years of
experience, said taking into
account the complexity of the
new legislation, training of
customs officers would play
a central role in
the successful
implementation.
“While I am
certainly in favour
of the clarity and
predictability
that Sars hopes
to introduce with
the advent of the
new customs
acts, my concern
lies mainly with
the potential for
increased abuse
which goes with
the increased clarity,” he said.
Sars has announced that
the first phase of the new
legislation will be implemented
before the end of the year.
While this will not affect
trading as yet – as it will
only involve re-registration
and re-licensing of all South
African businesses with
customs – in terms of the new
legislation it does indicate that
the acts are on their way to
becoming a reality.
“My concern lies with poorly
trained customs officers, of
which there are many in my
direct experience,” said Pool.
“The customs officers don’t
even know or understand the
current much shorter version
of the customs legislation
(the Customs and Excise
Act, number
91 of 1964, as
amended from
time to time). It
is extremely
doubtful in my
humble opinion
that they are
going to cope any
better with the
new legislation.”
He said
training was
imperative given
the major task
these officers
faced when the new legislation
– comprising more than a
1000 sections – was activated.
He said another major
concern was around the
introduction of compulsory
penalties in the new customs
acts, a brand new invention in
South Africa.
“These are the so-called
set of “non-prosecutable”
breaches. Being nonprosecutable,
these are
essentially negligible
contraventions. But nobody
who receives them would
be in any doubt that there is
nothing negligible about the
substantial amounts involved
in each case,” said Pool. “I
doubt that this is economically
viable for many of the
companies in this industry and
fear that this may cause more
damage than good. However,
I am very open-minded and
feel that reality will be our
best teacher.”
Shepstone and Wylie
partner Quintus van
der Merwe said taking
into account the sheer
volume of the new acts
there was no doubt that major
teething problems would be
experienced when the laws
came into effect.
He said there were already
a few cases where lack of
experience at Sars had become
evident and the organisation
just seemed overwhelmed.
There are certainly going
to be major challenges when
these acts come in, not
necessarily because Sars
has done anything wrong
or industry has for that
matter. There will be teething
problems. This legislation
is extremely complex and it
introduces huge changes to
our customs environment.”
INSERT
A major concern
is around the
introduction
of compulsory
penalties in the
new customs acts.
– Jean Pool