Customs demands $700,000
PA Auckland New Zealand customs officials say they will proceed with legal action unless airlines pay $700,000 in charges this week. Airlines, including Air New Zealand, have been refusing to pay the department for the cost of employing customs and immigration officers at airports after normal hours. The department has been trying to enforce a
payment of $45 an hour an officer, which the airlines do not believe they should face. Airlines say processing arriving passengers and looking for drugs should be the responsibility of the taxpayer. Now the department has put up the rate to $7l an hour and has given the airlines until the. end of the week to pay. If the airlines do not meet the demand, the department would proceed
with legal action, said the general manager of border operations, Mr Ron McGrath, yesterday. A spokesman for the airlines said they would write to the department asking for a meeting which the department had agreed to earlier this' year. The spokesman said, “At the moment we are not paying. I do not think we will lie down and just accept it.”
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Press, 9 November 1988, Page 8
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188Customs demands $700,000 Press, 9 November 1988, Page 8
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