John H. T. Stewart
Under the terms of the Pre-Shipment Inspection Agreement signed between the Government of Liberia and the Societe General de Surveillance(SGS), the SGS inspects and certifies through a Clean Report of Findings(CRF) the authenticity of all commodities imported into Liberia and recommends the appropriate tariff(s)/duties to be imposed by the GoL.
And on each shipment/container a Cargo Tracking Number is assigned to help enable the importer track his goods so clearly the so-called CTN is irrelevant and redundant.
The Pre-Shipment Inspection regime is to ensure that whatever is declared on the Import Declaration Permit is not false or misleading or that the goods are substandard. In case the goods delivered are substandard, SGS indemnifies the Consignee against loss.
At the end of the year, the GoL pays to SGS a commission of two(2) percent on the total amount/value realized from import duties.
Under the Met-Tech Agreement, to the contrary, Met-Tech does not perform Pre-Shipment Inspection simply because it lacks capacity but instead does what it calls “Destination Inspection.
This means that the goods will be inspected at the point of destination/Customs entry points and the appropriate duties imposed all of which goes into Met-Tech accounts.
This is why it was possible to declare chicken parts when in fact millions of dollars’ worth of illicit drugs were stuffed into the container.
Not a dime goes directly into government revenue. In fact, the
revenue sharing agreement is lopsided-a whooping eighty percent (80%) in favor of Met-Tech and worse still the twenty percent (20%) that government is to receive goes into an account run by Met-Tech.
What is mindboggling is that the bogus Met-Tech and Cargo Tracking Note(CTN) agreements appear to have passed the scrutiny of the Minister of Justice who is the official legal advisor to the President and signatory to all Agreements entered into between the GoL and any party(ies).
Clearly, Liberia is being shortchanged and public officials-in this case, Commerce Minister Amin Modad and LRA Director-General Dorbor Jallah have lost their salt.
By the way just when has the LRA become directly involved in the purchase of vehicles for line Ministries and Agencies?
Their action is clearly indistinguishable from and analogous to daylight highway armed robbery.
In the opinion of the public, both Dorbor Jallah and Amin Modad ought to be suspended pending a full investigation and found liable be dismissed forthwith and criminally prosecuted.
They and others of similar inclinations should be reminded that as the founding fathers declared in the 1847 Preamble of the Declaration of Independence, “Liberia is not the offspring of ambition, nor the tool of avaricious speculation.”
