The public relations officer of the Sierra Leone Traders’ Union (SLeTU), Agina Mansaray, has asked the Commissioner General of the National Revenue Authority (NRA) Alieu Sesay whether police officials are responsible to value goods bought by traders.
Or whether it is their constitutional mandate to effect arrests especially on traders without the due authorization of NRA.
Mr Mansaray added that it was dishearten to talk on the role of the police with regards to NRA’s official duty.
The PRO said this yesterday during a dialogue forum organized by NRA with for SLeTU at the Miatta Conference hall in Freetown.
He maintained that the rationale was the undue harassments of traders by the police had become an unprecedented phenomenon.
This act, he said, was an attack on the integrity of traders, adding that it also constituted an arrogant insult to the traders and contravened all norms of national trading policies.
Mr Mansaray pointed out that this could be exemplified as a result of the ugly development at Bamoi Lumar, Kambia district in which four trucks loaded with rice, gari, palm oil, among others were arrested as “smuggled goods”.
He stated that, “Bamoi Lumar is an international market which has attracted motley crowd of traders from within and outside the country to transact business”.
In his tax education statement the Assistant Director, Special Duties, Oswald Hanciles, urged traders to pay their taxes to NRA custom and excise officers and not to “charter men”.
He told them that if they bypassed the right procedures of paying their taxes then CAP 271 of Sierra Leone law would bite them.
Giving the role of the Preventive Services and Special Duties (PSSD), assistant commissioner customs and excise department, Retired Colonel Mike Conteh said, “NRA has the mandate to set check point all over the country, capture people who disadvantaged those that are paying taxes, patrol all over the country and if they suspects traders smuggling un-costumed goods will face the consequences”.
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