By ANNELIA NIXON

anixon@tribunemedia.net

Customs’ top official yesterday said it is “no secret” that the agency is short-staffed amid officer concerns over promotions, replacements, delayed overtime payments and transportation fees.

Ralph Munroe responded in a Tribune Business interview to a variety of grievances that were recently aired over the Department at a Bahamas Customs, Immigration and Allied Workers Union meeting.

Deron Brooks, the union’s president, alleged it had tried on multiple occasions to meet with Mr Munroe but to no avail. Eventually, it met with representatives from the Ministry of Finance instead. “In the earlier part of the month of May, the union had made a request to the director of Immigration, the office of the director of Immigration and the office of the Comptroller of Customs,” he asserted. 

“Since then, the union was able to meet with the directorate of the Immigration Department. However, after several attempts to meet with the office of the Comptroller of Customs with negative results, the union appealed to Simon Wilson [the Ministry of Finance’s financial secretary], the financial comptroller, and Janice Miller, the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Finance.”

Mr. Brooks said matters concerning “outstanding promotions, reclassifications and outstanding monies that were owed to the Customs officers and cashiers” were all discussed at the union meeting. He added that he and other union members are still waiting for a response or a solution to their complaints.

According to one Customs officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, this was not the first attempt to bring issues within the Department to light. They said the same concerns were voiced when Prime Minister Philip Davis KC visited the agency’s headquarters on July 12 to show his appreciation for collecting revenue in excess of $1.4bn for the 2023-2024 fiscal year. 

In regards to the Prime Minister’s visit, one employee said: “A lot of officers showed up to that because there’s so much going on in Customs right now, and they thought that was the only chance they were going to get to voice their concerns or to finally get some much-needed help with what’s going on in the Department.”

The Prime Minister sent Ms Miller, Mr Wilson and others back to Customs headquarters on July 19 to hear the grievances in more detail. Supersessions, meaning the replacement of one officer by another, were among the topics discussed. There were claims many officers were being replaced without just cause “basically out of victimisation or favoritism, or too much political interference”.

Another Customs officer added: “How is that possible when, according to their employee performance appraisals, they are up for promotion as their EPA don’t say otherwise to say that they have any negative things on their EPA. So how is it that you promote somebody who’s under me? Promote them above me, and there’s nothing that you can justify as to why.”

Mr Munroe yesterday said promotions and supersessions are not left solely up to him. He added that the same process followed by the “wider public service” for promotions is used by Customs.

“This office make recommendations and that isn’t done strictly by the head of department, Mr Munroe said. “The human resources section, which comprises persons who may be permanent staff here for years, as well as someone from recently came in. We look at the file. That is what we look at. Of course, there are sometimes other circumstance that may cause someone not to be recommended.

“If they wish to, they can appeal this position on recommendation and they can go all the way, to be honest with you, up to the [Public Service] Commission. When the Commission makes a decision, you’ve got the Public Service Appeal Commission. So we have in place in The Bahamas, for all public officers, the mechanism for due process, for anybody who is aggrieved.

“I’m part of the so-called committee. The senior officers and executives who would be there, and there would be persons from human resources would be there, and all we do is we make a recommendation. The recommendation goes to the Ministry of Finance. The Department of Public [Service] personnel, they look at it and from there then it goes to the Commission.”

Mr Munroe said he did not want to speak to who has the final decision on promotions, adding: “I can’t say how the Commission operates. I wouldn’t want to speak for them.”

One officer, though, alleged timely promotions are a problem in Customs, adding, “If you get promoted today, look to stay in that rank for the next seven to 13 years. A few people from the last promotional exercise that were on the list to be promoted met every requirement or eligibility for the promotion. They still have not been promoted.” Mr Munroe, though, blamed the delay on COVID-19 fall-out.  

“We had the largest promotional exercise ever in the history of this department, and that’s less than three years ago, November 2022,” he said. “Since then, we had some promotions, sporadic small promotions. We still got some data in the pipeline that is coming through. Probably some will tell you something because files weren’t complete and so forth.

“If you know what happened during COVID, everything shut down. We had persons who would have moved from one area to another so they couldn’t get the progress report and stuff on time, and sometimes we find persons who were supposed to make it already retired. So that hold up quite a few of the officers.”

Another Customs officer said they believe people who are due for promotions are not receiving them because retired employees are being rehired. “They’re not promoting, but they’re bringing back retired staff,” they said. “They’re not promoting the staff that is due promotion because they’re bringing back all these people who attained the age of 65 and wouldn’t go home.”

Mr Munroe defended such moves, adding that officers who are re-hired will benefit the department with their knowledge and experience. “What we have to look at is we are short-staffed, still,” he said. “That’s no secret, that’s no apology. It is what it is.

“Does it make sense for us to allow people who could assist with revenue collection and protection, and could offer good service to this country, if they are willing to? Does it make sense for us to allow them just to go into retirement and, by retaining them, we could collect millions more?

“They augment the numbers that we need, plus the knowledge that they have, we could use them. Only in The Bahamas, when you get a certain age, we throw you into retirement and that time that some people could function and could give you what you need, but it doesn’t impede the progress of persons below you.”

Reclassifications is another issue vexing some Customs officers. Sources have said many employees have gone from non-uniform positions to Customs officers but have still not received the benefits that they are supposed to receive. Mr Munroe, however, assured that if a person is reclassified they will receive the benefits owed to them.

“The governor-general does the appointment on recommendation of the Public Service Commission,” he added. “If you want to be reclassified, you got to go all the way back through there. Once they’re done, they would then inform us. Once they inform us, that letter will come to the head of department, who is the comptroller.

“The comptroller would send that on to the human resources section, and the human resources section will take the necessary action. Whatever benefit that they would be entitled to under new reclassifications, they would get it. If it’s monetary, they would have it. If it’s uniform, they would have it, whatever it is. But we can’t do it until you’re so instructed.

“For instance, some persons were reclassified and they became officers, and one of their gripes is that they don’t have the benefit of the insurance. That’s one of the things they would say. We’re saying until that comes to us and say that you are a Customs officer, no one can act on it. We cannot, and that’s why I say it ain’t with us when it comes back. We know what we sent up. Until that happens, we can’t do a thing about it.”

Mr Brooks said he believes the biggest complaint from his Customs officer members relates to overtime payments and transportation fees. One officer said many employees have not received their overtime pay since December 2023.

“The problem with the overtime that is not being paid and is still pending from January of this year, transportation officers use their private vehicle to go to these various sites, and transportation is backed up from basically the same time. No transportation has been paid. Some people have not gotten it from last year, actually,” another officer said.

Mr Munroe explained the process of getting overtime and transportation money to the officers.

“We got a small account section,” he said. “They got to deal with the daily work that is normal within the collection of government revenue, and they also got to deal with the transportation bills for the officers, the fees to be paid. They got to deal with overtime. They got to deal with shift allowances.

“We find out that to get it done, the account section has got to make overtime so that we could pay the officers their overtime, and that again is a lot of money. What they’re dealing with now, as we speak, is not overtime. They got to deal with grabbing collections; that’s going on now. People are paying. They gotta come for that now. Dealing with that.

“Later on we could look at these bills that are coming from the out stations and coming from the Family Islands. They got to work Saturday, Sunday and every evening. They’ve been doing that now for months, trying to catch up,” Mr Munroe continued. 

“I dealt with some bills, I think Monday or Tuesday for December of last year, just reach to me. Accounts got to look at it first. They got to receive it. When they receive it they meet bills. So they try to go back, take from the bottom and they got to go through every bill.”