By Ziyah News Reporter
Beitbridge based clearing agents have raised concerns on the lack of urgency on the country’s revenue body ZIMRA in handling complains and what they termed overcrowding of the Beitbridge Border Post by redundant staff.
The clearing agents were speaking during ZIMRA’s ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System Certification Awareness Workshop held in the border town.
“There are a lot of people who you see milling around and you are not even sure what they are doing. Some of the processes are repeated and in some instances after being cleared, you find someone who is not even aware of tariff bands telling you the duty you have paid is too little, yet they have no single idea of how the calculations were done, its an inconvenience and these are the kind of people that delay us,” said one clearing agent who cannot be named for ethical reasons.
Others expressed concern about the communication culture at the Revenue Authority saying it leaves a lot to be desired.
“It is ironical that ZIMRA requires us to use emails to communicate yet they do not even open the emails. When you make a follow up, you are told send another email, and when you go physically they tell you to go back and write another email. Its frustrating and the same goes with some of the papers, you leave them in office A, when you come back for them you are referred to office B, you go there they tell you your papers are not here, it’s an unnecessary trouble,” said one of the participating clearing agents.
Facilitator of the workshop Mr John Chingoriwo from ZIMRA’s Risk and Compliance Division acknowledged some of the concerns raised by the clearing agencies especially the email responding culture in the organisation which needed to change.
The awareness workshop was help as part of the process of ZIMRA to acquire the ISO certification as part of its commitment and pledge to provide quality services to its clientele with the ultimate goal being efficiency and the ability of people to be able to predict the kind of service they will get from the Revenue Authority.