FURTHER shake-ups are in the wings for operations at the Customs Depart-ment come next year, Commissioner of Customs Danville Walker has said.

According to Walker, as of January 1, Customs will no longer see 'personal effects' as an adequate description of cargo and where commercial goods are found being listed as 'personal effects', pockets will smart.

"Wherever we find it the officers have been instructed to list and tally in detail every item and apply the duties," he said. "Where we find commercial goods being listed as personal effects come January 1, we are also going to apply a breach. That game is going to come to an end," Walker told the Observer recently.

"We have situations where people list commercial items as personal effects; that is a big scam in this country, they say it's personal effects and when you open it for example it's car parts or other commercial goods," Walker said, noting that persons used this route to get exemption from fees and getting a Tax Compliance Certificate.

"I would have loved to start this immediately; it took everything out of me to say January 1," he added.

In the meantime, Walker said the department was also not going to be tolerant of persons trying to beat the system by saying they had 'forgotten the invoice' when containers are found with undeclared goods in them. He has already met with one shipping line on the matter.

"We understand the story that someone may pack goods and no invoice comes and it's the same story that you are going to get from the person who made a genuine mistake or from the person who is deliberately trying to evade custom duties and we can't tell the difference so we are going to treat everything the same," he told the Observer.

"Whenever we find excess goods and no invoice declared, we are going to file a breach and there will be no mitigation of that breach. In such cases the cost is three times the duty of the item at a minimum. And every time we catch you, you are going to pay," he said in warning to persons who have been able to evade the system at times.

"What we want is compliance, if you want, you can go back to your shipper and say you made the mistake reimburse me," he noted.

He said while the revenue lost from the unfair practice was not much compared to the duties collected regularly "it was still millions of dollars".

"We are taking a harder line and search-ing more. We basically say to customs officers, if you don't find anything then what is the point in you being there because we know things are there to be found so you need to find them," he added.

And much is being done to reduce the time to clear goods which has been a sticking point in the department's lifetime.

Walker said this will be done through assistance being received currently from a consultant and project team from the World Customs Organisation in Brussels.

"They are reviewing all of our processes and all of our procedures starting from when the ship pulls up alongside the dock to when the cargo goes through the front door.

"When we get that analysis done we will know the exact timeline it takes to get cargo off the Port of Jamaica and we will also have recommendations for improvements in our business practices," he said.

"What our work is going to be over the next 18 months is that it is not just about doing things a little better or automating a few steps, we have to look at changing the way some of the processes work so that it takes less paper and less steps," he added.