A new scheme should be introduced by the Government and the line ministries to charge the losses incurred to the country due to trade union action, from the bonuses or rewards that are offered to them, said Sean Van Dort.
He was speaking following his re-election as Chairman of the Sri Lanka Shippers’ Council at its 54th Annual General Meeting at the Ceylon Chamber auditorium on Friday.
He said that due to the recent Customs trade union action the Government lost huge amounts of revenue and steps should be taken in the future to charge or deduct these losses from the employee’s bonuses or rewards which also run in to billions of Rupees. “Employees did not lose a cent from this trade union action.”
In a hard hitting speech he said that it’s so sad to see rampant corruption and free acceptance of corruption that is going on at the Prot when clerking items. “You have to take Rs. 6,000 to pay as bribes each time you clear a container and the bribes range from Rs. 200 upwards.”
Saying that this happened for over 40 years and none of the successive governments or ministers in charge could not stop it, he said that the only time it stopped was during the pandemic as clearing was done online.
“However, when the pandemic subsided, customers went back from the highly successful paperless sysem to the old system. This is because they wanted to engage in corruption.” He also said that most of these employees in the Customs have through free education and now strike for any trivial matter for which the country should be ashamed of.
He said that the private sector too has to take part of this blame as they are the ones who feed the Customs with bribes and offset that payment from the end customers.
Van Dort said that similar situations are happening at the Board of Investment, Airport, and Inland Revenue Department as well and the only way to stop this is to go digital.
He said that the private sector is not asking the Government for any handout but only to clear up these ugly situations.
While praising the movements of ships in the Port, he said that steps should be taken to have cleaner warehouses, and try to reduce pilferage.
He called on the Government to look at reintroducing the SVAT scheme again or set up a robust refund mechanism.
