Cus­toms and Ex­cise is grap­pling with a ma­jor val­u­a­tion prob­lem, Cus­toms Comp­trol­ler Ri­ad Ju­man re­vealed yes­ter­day while de­fend­ing his of­fi­cers’ con­duct in as­sess­ing im­port­ed prod­ucts.

Ac­cord­ing to Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit, the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty—in­clud­ing en­tre­pre­neurs in her con­stituen­cy—has long ex­pressed griev­ances over what they de­scribe as ar­bi­trary ques­tion­ing and over­val­u­a­tion of in­voic­es by Cus­toms staff.

“Busi­ness­men are con­stant­ly left frus­trat­ed and feel they are be­ing un­fair­ly treat­ed by un­pro­fes­sion­al of­fi­cers,” Mo­hit said, ques­tion­ing whether val­u­a­tion of­fi­cers are prop­er­ly trained to in­ter­act with cus­tomers.