C.No. S-19/1/2004 CH Date: 03-02-2004
PUBLIC NOTICE NUMBER: 3
/2004
Sub: Recovery of
Merchant Over Time (MOT) for rendering services by the Customs Officer beyond
working hours and holidays – Reg.
Attention of all
concerned is invited to the Regulation 3 (1) of the Customs (fees for rendering
services by Customs Officers) Regulation, 1998, wherein “any person” can request for the services of
Customs Officers on payment of specified overtime fees (Circular No.68/98 Cus
dated 07.09.98 also refers). The
practice till now has been that such requests were being entertained from
individual importers/exporters only.
2. The matter has been examined by the Board. It is observed that the scope of the
expression “ any person” in Regulation 3 (1) is wide enough to cover even a
custodian of ICD, CFS, warehouse, airport or port. In other words, the custodian can also requisition the services
of Customs Officer on overtime basis on behalf of importers / exporters. As per Regulation 3 (2), the fees will have
to be paid in advance by the said custodian.
3. Thus, the requests for services of Customs Officers beyond
working hours can be made either by the individual exporter / importer or the
custodian of the ICD, CFS, warehouse, airports or ports.
4. When the custodian makes a request for rendering of services
of Customs Officers beyond working hours, he will be required to pay only for
the block periods for which the services were requisitioned irrespective of the
number of importers’/ exporters’ documents handled during the period. The custodian, in turn, will, for
administrative convenience, divide the amount equally amongst all the
importers/exporters whose work was attended to during the period, irrespective
of number of documents of each importer/exporter or the value or weight of the
consignments.
5. If the request for
services is made by individual importers /exporters themselves, the existing
practice will continue.
P. Karthikeyan
Commissioner
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