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The Cus­toms Clerks and Cus­toms Bro­kers As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CC­C­BA) has is­sued a pub­lic call for ur­gent in­ter­ven­tion fol­low­ing the re­cent fail­ure of the Au­to­mat­ed Sys­tem for Cus­toms Da­ta (ASY­CU­DA), which sup­ports the coun­try’s cus­toms and trade pro­cess­ing.

On June 30, the Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms and Ex­cise for­mal­ly no­ti­fied the pub­lic that the ASY­CU­DA sys­tem had been com­pro­mised due to wa­ter dam­age at the Cus­toms House, lo­cat­ed at the Gov­ern­ment Cam­pus Plaza in Port of Spain. The CC­C­BA has clar­i­fied that since that time, its mem­bers have had no ac­cess to the sys­tem.

ASY­CU­DA is re­spon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing im­port and ex­port doc­u­men­ta­tion, pay­ments to cus­toms, and sup­port for oth­er gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies. It is al­so used by Cus­toms of­fi­cers across all ports and bond­ed ware­hous­es for the clear­ance and de­liv­ery of car­go.