Lapeña reassigns 66 BOC personnel

The Bureau of Customs (BOC) has reassigned to various offices 66 personnel, including port district collectors who failed to meet their March revenue target.

Among those covered by the reassignment, signed by Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III, was Erastus Sandino Austria, former district collector of Port of Davao, who is now the district collector of Port of Manila.

Austria replaced Vener Baquiran, who has been transferred to the BOC Compliance Monitoring Unit.

Export Coordination Division chief Romalino Valdez of the Assessment and Operations Coordinating Group will replace Austria.

District Collector Maritess Martin is now the district collector of the Manila International Container Port (MICP).

Martin was replaced by Lilibeth Sandag of the Revenue Collection Monitoring Group (RCMG) to head Port of Clark.

Former MICP collector Balmyrson Valdez will now head the Legal Service of the RCMG, while Yasser Ismail Abbas is now the director of the Financial Service, RCMG.

Aside from Austria and Martin, Wivina Pumatong of the subport of Mactan assumed the position of district collector of the Port of Iloilo.

“I have given Austria and Martin bigger responsibilities to head the major ports since they are consistently hitting their targets with huge surpluses since I assumed as commissioner,” Customs chief Isidro Lapeña said.

The Port of Manila and MICP, collected P5.776 billion and P12.625 billion, 14.9 percent and 9.28 percent lower than their targets, respectively. —TINA G. SANTOS