3 more Customs execs sent to ‘freezer’

Bureau of Customs. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–Three more top officials of the Bureau of Customs have been transferred to the newly created Customs Policy Research Office, or CPRO, bringing to more than 40 the total number of BOC executives who were moved to the so-called Customs “freezer” at the Department of Finance (DOF) headquarters.

In a May 26 directive, Customs Commissioner John Phillip Sevilla ordered the transfer of the following officials to the CPRO: Elvira Cruz, district collector of the Port of Limay in Bataan; Rolando Sacramento, chief of the Intelligence Unit of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Division, and intelligence officer Jimmy Guban.

Sevilla did not say why Cruz, Sacramento and Guban were transferred to the CPRO.

The BOC head’s order, approved by Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima, was “effective immediately.” The BOC is an agency attached to the finance department.

Last December, a group of Customs officials detailed at the CPRO questioned their transfer before the Civil Service Commission, claiming their rights as government personnel had been violated.

Floating status 

At least two district collectors interviewed by the Inquirer disputed the DOF’s claim that the CPRO was the Customs “think tank.”

The officials, both of whom asked not to be named for lack of authority to speak to media, insisted they had been placed on “floating status.”

“What research work are they talking about? The CPRO is a freezer, a waste of taxpayers’ money,” one of the collectors said.

In a related development, 142 personnel of the Customs Intelligence Group were the subject of another Customs order, rotating them in bureau’s 17 collection districts nationwide.

The move was aimed to “reinvigorate all customs units in the collection districts and make the Intelligence Group more responsive and capable of supporting the reform thrusts of Commissioner Sevilla,” said the BOC.

In a statement, the bureau’s Public Information and Assistance Division (PIAD) yesterday said “unavoidably, many of the IG personnel will be dislodged from their comfort zones.”

“But in order for the IG to be more responsive and relevant in this period of renewal, the group’s leadership recognizes the need for their personnel to develop greater situational awareness in the difference collection districts. They need to be exposed to the different operational environments and the other aspects of customs operations in order to initiate actions to support the other groups in the bureau, as well as the collection districts,” said PIAD acting chief Charo Logarta-Lagamon.