MANILA, Philippines — While previous Customs commissioners have complained about the culture of “influence peddling” in the bureau, the Bureau of Customs (BOC) claimed that during the nearly year-long stay of Commissioner Isidro Lapeña in office, no favor has been granted to any politician or influential person trying to bring in shipments nor has any undeserving employee been promoted.
BOC spokesman Erastus Sandino Austria told The Chiefs, a news program aired over One News of Cignal TV, that Lapeña would not tolerate political requests.
For decades, the BOC has been perceived as a corrupt agency following speculations that politicians would request for their relatives and friends to be transferred to better positions or for help in facilitating the release of cargoes.
Previous officials of the agency, including former commissioner John Sevilla and former deputy commissioner Danilo Lim, even complained of political interference in the bureau’s operations.
“The thing today is if there is a politician who would ask favors from the commissioner to, let’s say, appoint someone to a particular position, it would not be good for that person. It would have an opposite effect because he made it a policy that we want to judge our people by their work, merit based, instead of having backers,” said Austria, who is also the district collector of the Port of Manila.
He said Lapeña wants to initiate meaningful and long lasting reforms at the BOC.
Under Lapeña’s leadership, Austria said no politician has been linked to smuggling of rice, sugar and illegal drugs.
Austria also said Lapeña would not tolerate any wrongdoing of BOC personnel. “There are no holy cows today.”
In fact, since the commissioner assumed the post on Aug. 30, 2017, he has relieved or reassigned at least 900 employees over different administrative or criminal offenses, comprising about one-third of the agency’s over 3,000 personnel.
Out of the 900 reported erring Customs personnel, 117 have been included in the criminal complaints filed before the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the suspicion that they helped facilitate the process or release of suspected smuggled shipments.
He explained that these suspected erring Customs employees are still with the bureau because they “enjoy security of tenure” and are entitled to due process with all of the administrative remedies made available to them.