International passengers may soon have a smooth sailing as far as customs clearance at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in the city is concerned.
International passengers may soon have a smooth sailing as far as customs clearance at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in the city is concerned.
The customs department is all set to modify its procedures and is coming up with several other user-friendly technologies to give passengers a hassle-free clearance at the airport.
To streamline the customs clearance facilities at the airport, the department will set up two scanners. One scanner has already been installed and will begin functioning within a day or two, while the other one will be installed soon.
Once these scanners start functioning, it will considerably reduce the clearance time. For the first time, there will be online scanning of passengers’ baggage.
The scanners will be attached to the conveyor or baggage belt and the clearing of the baggage will be shown to the customs official via the electronic board attached to the belt. In case of a suspicious bag, the customs official will put a cross mark on the bag and then physically check it.
The passengers whose bags have been cleared by the scanners will not face any other hassles.
A senior official said that the bags will be scanned before they are loaded on the conveyor belt. Therefore, only those passengers whose bags have been held due to suspicion need to wait for further clearance. Earlier if in case of a suspicious baggage, all passengers had to wait.
“With these two scanners, we will begin selective checking of baggages. As of now we carry out all the checking physically but the scanners will halve the burden and we will check baggages only if we find it suspicious,” said chief commissioner, customs Gujarat, Vijay Lakshmi Sharma. Sharma said that the plan is to streamline the clearance procedures.
She said that there were complaints related to customs clearance, which prompted the department to make the clearing system more user-friendly.
Another major decision taken by the department is to deploy two women officers at the clearance centre. According to Sharma, there were several suggestions and demand from people to have women personnel as the number of women passengers is moderately high.
“For passengers’ comfort, we are going to deploy two women officers at the airport. They will work during night shifts as international flight movements happen at that time. The officers will be of inspector and superintendent level,” Sharma told DNA.
Sharma also added that the department would install big electronic boards depicting the rules and regulations of the department. She said these boards would provide information related to clearance of passengers and goods according to the laws and names and contact numbers of officers in case of any grievances.
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