Juffa: Customs training vital

By SAMUEL RAITANO
BETTER knowledge and training is vital when protecting Papua New Guinea’s borders and community from harmful imports and transnational crimes, according to Customs Commissioner Gary Juffa.
Juffa said human resources development was crucial to enhancing service delivery in customs services and this year, more than 30 customs services officers had attended a variety of short, medium-and-long term training programmes overseas.
The training would improve Papua New Guinea Customs Services and raise the standard of surveillance for the country.
The officers were trained in the areas of trade facilitation, intelligence and investigations, money laundering, intellectual property rights, transnational crimes, information technology in customs and management.
Juffa said it was vital to have well trained officials to scrutinise what came into the country in order to protect the citizens.
With the K55 million allocated to the PNG Customs Services by the national government, Juffa said K33 million would be spent on container scanners for wharves in the country where goods from overseas would be unloaded.
He added that the training was to maximise thorough surveillance on many new transnational crimes like people smuggling, influx of contrabands and illegal imports.
He also expressed his satisfaction that officers training abroad demonstrated greater knowledge and commitment and the investment in that area was worth the costs as it greatly enhanced PNG Customs services ability to improve the protection of PNG’s border and communities.
“I believe in grooming future leaders and developing succession planning.
“There must be continuity in our management and there must be awareness of international best practice and knowledge of Customs responsibilities so that we may better serve our nation and our people,” Juffa said.
The trainings were conducted in Australia, Malaysia, Japan, China, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Fiji and Europe.