IMPORTER PROTESTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21280, 25 February 1939, Page 8

IMPORTER PROTESTS

DELAY IN SECURING GOODS 1 eiegrapti—Press Association WELLINGTON. February 24. Delay in getting goods through the Customs Department is causing concern to Wellington business men. One importer said that during the past few weeks it had taken five times as long to obtain clearances as it had in the past and he blamed what he described as “cumbersome licensing regulations.”

The delay was no reflection on the Department’s officers, he said, and in fairness to them it should be stated that they were being sweated by the Government. “There is no 40-hour week for them, and some are working till 10 o’clock every night of the week. The officers would have felt the time on the job clearing the shipments in the usual way, without having to endorse each license against invoices. ’ The speaker added that he had given the Department papers for one shipment last Tuesday, and had since been advised that the goods would not be available till next Monday. In the meantime harbour dues for storage were mounting up. Formerly the goods would have been cleared in one day. If he had the goods on two vessels in port at the one time, the delay was intensified because he had to wait till the first vessel was cleared before he could get his import license back to submit it with the papers for the second vessel. Another importer said that recently the wharf sheds had been choked with goods. A contributing cause of the delay had been the fact that during the past two weeks there had been eight vessels in port, an unusually large number