Ridding Customs of old grime, Biazon stuck in own ‘dirty kitchen’

Nineteen months into the job, Customs Commissioner Rufino Biazon has yet to renovate his Port Area office, which he likens to a “dirty kitchen at home” and where he takes his lunch on a “foldable plastic table.”

In a recent blog post, Biazon said he “took over the office of the commissioner with minimal changes.”

“With the exception of some additional cabinets, rearranging some furniture and removing the remnants of a bar inside the office, I did not have a renovation done,” said the former Muntinlupa City representative.

“There’s a small inner room where a sofa and a couple of side chairs were placed, presumably an area where the commissioner could take time off from work. I converted that into a working office, similar to a dirty kitchen at home, where I can do my paperwork… I transferred the sofa and side chairs to the main office where I can entertain visitors. For that, I had to sacrifice my round conference table where I usually took my lunch,” Biazon said.

In a text message to the Inquirer on Thursday, Biazon said he “did not make any major changes in the office of the commissioner itself.”

“But we did renovations of some offices and facilities, such as toilets, the OCOM building lobby and the formal entry of the Port of Manila, where the most dramatic change happened. It used to look like an open market place where brokers and their representatives mixed and mingled with customs staff,” he said.

As a result of the renovation, “transactions are now made through windows and customs employees are separated from transacting with the public in an enclosed space with biometric access.”

“We also opened a brokers’ lounge where brokers can wait for their transactions to be processed. We also opened a media lounge where reporters can stay instead of in the BOC offices,” he said.

In a report, Biazon again batted anew for a “technology-driven” BOC.

“It’s a vision where human intervention is at a minimum, where the exercise of discretion leading to abuse of the same is nonexistent, the speed of processes are measured in minutes, if not seconds.

“The weakness of the current system leaves us vulnerable to connivance… A trader who is in need to clear his goods as quickly as he can meets someone in authority who has the power over the clearance process.

“With the right motivation and resources, connivance between the two enables smuggling,” he said.