ISLAMABAD: A foreign national has revealed in his complaint addressed to the Deputy Collector Customs Airport Islamabad that a customs official at airport Islamabad used to regularly take a hefty amount of bribe money from him in return for passing the personal goods accompanying him during his frequent travels to Islamabad.
According to details, the foreign national informed the Deputy Collector Customs through his complaint that a custom official named Muslim used to be kind to him in passing his personal baggage from the airport without any hassle in return for huge amounts of bribe money taken from him.
In one of his landings at the airport Islamabad, the foreign national stated in his complaint, Muslim took bribe money from him but assigned his facilitation to another custom official named Zia who again charged him the bribe money thus doubling the cost of his facilitation at the airport.
The foreign national requested in his complaint to the Deputy Collector that he was ready to pay a good amount of money at airport Islamabad in return for passing his excess baggage but not the double amount of money he had to pay to the two customs officials.
He said it was better for him to pay the single amount to one custom official than paying the double amount to the two.
Sources said that the custom department had fallen into a mad money making spree everywhere, on roads by facilitating smuggling of contraband goods and on custom stations by facilitating valuation frauds and by clearing imported goods against locally fabricated invoice values.
Sources said that the former as well as incumbent high ups of Customs collectorate Islamabad are fully backing few chosen Junior staff posted at different positions and complaints against the custom officials were being assigned to dustbins.
Meanwhile, it has also been surfaced that Customs collectorate Islamabad has given three important charges including Unaccompanied Baggage, Export and AFU warehouse to another member Raja Fayyaz of chosen group.
The high ups of Customs collectorate Islamabad including Collector Customs Hasan Saqib did not reply on this matter.
The Chief Collector Islamabad Imran Mohmand asked this scribe to contact relevant additional collectors or Collector to verify the details.
Additional Deputy Collector Islamabad replied that this is before I got posted but he shared details of one another similar incident in which one foreign national misbehaved with the customs staff posted at Islamabad airport.
“Customs authorities detained 32 wine bottles from foreign national, adding that he claimed that the foreign national misbehaved with staff but the same were not released as I had strictly ordered for zero tolerance”, he added.
He said that a report is being submitted to collector Islamabad about the whole incident.
