Fears of office closure trigger storm of protest, writes Alan Peat
DESPITE DENIALS from customs & excise head office that no closure of SARS (SA Revenue Services) offices is planned (FTW, July 14, 2000), Pietermaritzburg business is in an uproar about what is due to happen there.
Individual businesses, the local chamber of commerce (PCCI) and the Democratic Party (DC) are up in arms about the detrimental implications of SARS' national plan to re-engineer and the decision to downsize the Pmb office to a Service Point Centre.
This comes from what is purported to be a SARS national plan - and released to Kwa Zulu Natal chambers and the media by the Durban SARS/Customs regional office recently.
In this, it is understood that there are to be six Super Centres around the country - in Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, Gauteng East and Gauteng West. These are to be control centres or central data offices.
They are to be supported by what are termed Compliance Centres (presumably tax payment offices) while smaller centres will be served by Service Point Centres, as in Pmb.
News of a secret SARS restructuring plan has been greeted with dismay by the local business community, said Andrew Layman, director of the Pmb chamber. It is expected that the local office will do little more than offer superficial service to the taxpayers.
This, according to councillor Rodger Ashe, would see plus/minus 200 staff moving office to Durban. I fear that Pietermaritzburg is being gnawed away slowly, he told the Natal Witness, but just as surely as when termites undermine a building.
And, added local customs specialist, Alan Hastings, this downsizing would seem to intend the customs staff being cut from six to one.
The level or quality of service would diminish accordingly, I feel, Hastings said. Surely reducing staff means that the level of supervision, policing and control in the region will suffer.
What will become of their inspection programmes in depots; control of customs-bonded warehouses; rebate stores; and excise-related businesses?
But Fani Zulu, media liaison manager with customs, re-iterated what he has already told FTW.
No decision has been made to close any offices.
Some of the office activities which are just administrative (like data capture) can be put into other centres, Zulu told FTW in reply to the Maritzburg complaints. Where they are face-to-face activities, they will not be closed down.
We are actually trying to arrange this interface better.
What we are asking is how do we organise so that we get economies of scale and efficiency, while minimising the effect on our employees.
But this thinking, Zulu stressed, is still only at discussion stage.
There are 14 initiatives on the table - on which we agree in principle. But all this is subject to a detailed planning procedure - and this will need the approval of the minister.
The Maritzburg reaction was people going off half-cocked, Zulu added.
Closing the office is not the option at this stage, he said. People are not waiting for the detailed planning to be done.
We are looking at offices - not to close them down - but to improve our service capacity, and strengthen the front-line activities.
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