Customs Commissioner Ruffy Biazon. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
The Bureu of Customs (BOC) is “handicapped by negative perceptions and prejudgment” that it is one of the most corrupt agencies of the government, Commissioner Ruffy Biazon said Monday.
Responding to a question raised by the Philippine Daily Inquirer during a news forum at the customs headquarters in Manila, Biazon said the agency was “faced with a challenge of overcoming” negative public perceptions.
“But I would say I’ve also come across positive comments from the public, saying that there have been positive changes in the bureau. So it’s still a continuing struggle,” Biazon said.
Biazon, who assumed his post in September 2011, lamented that “when some BOC personnel go out of their way to do something good, people do not seem to care.”
“We’re already prejudged,” he said.
Porsche-driving clerk
But the bureau gets all the attention in cases like the lowly-paid but Porsche-driving port clerk who was involved in a road-rage incident in Pasay City early this year, he said.
Cases like that “do not help our image,” Biazon said.
He was referring to the case involving Paulino Elevado, a former employee at the Port of Manila who was charged with attempted murder for allegedly beating up, chasing and firing on a couple of university students during a traffic altercation last January 21.
On Biazon’s orders, bureau investigators checked how Elevado, who earned less than P10,000 a month, could afford a Porsche worth $118,000.
Paulino quit his job as an “administrative aide” at the Port of Manila shortly after he was suspended.
Commenting on the incident, a foreign news agency said that regardless of the outcome of Elevado’s case, it had shone a spotlight on the wider problem of trying to clean up the corruption-riddled customs bureau.
Biazon cited “another case where the BOC had been prejudged.”
Haagen-Dazs ice cream
“That’s when somebody wrote (the Inquirer) a letter, saying their source of information had alleged that corruption at the BOC was the reason why Haagen-Dazs ice cream pulled out of the country,” he said.
Biazon said he “took a high-level inquiry and went directly to Haagen Dazs to inquire about the reason they pulled out.”
“Their response was the Bureau of Customs had nothing to do with their pullout. It turned out they were suffering from poor market conditions. The problem is the public believed that the bureau was the reason behind the pullout. I even issued a public explanation on this, but still the feedback from some people was… negative,” he said.
Clearly, he said, the customs bureau had been prejudged.
Another case was the agency’s recent seizure of 420,000 50-kilogram bags of Indian rice that were abandoned at the Subic Bay free port in Zambales.
“It’s the agency’s biggest smuggled rice haul… [It was a seizure]… [It was still being] unloaded, [I was already there]. And we’re the ones who told [the] media about it. But still, some people made it appear [that we were wrong],” he said.
‘Clear grand design’
In a statement issued earlier, Biazon said there was “clearly a grand design to illegally slip the 420,000 bags of imported rice into the country as not only was the importation undocumented, but its consignee tried to make it appear it was a transshipment originally bound for Indonesia.”
“Had we not stopped this illegal rice importation, it could have caused tremendous damage to our local farmers,” Biazon said.
He said the bureau would “never allow unscrupulous traders to exploit the privileges offered by the country’s various free port zones, like the Port of Subic, to be their staging points for smuggling.”
On Monday, Biazon appealed to the public to “keep an open mind on the reforms and changes that we’re doing” at the customs bureau.
“We have been trying our best to improve the Bureau of Customs’ image,” he said, adding that he was confident “it could be done, first, through good performance and, second, how you convey the positive image to the public.”