KARACHI: The Customs Computerized Clearing System (WeBOC) shut down throughout the country on Saturday stopping all the imports clearance.
Sources said the incident primarily occurred as the storage hard discs were not replaced after completion of warranty life. The entire Storage Area Network (SAN) shut down suspending all WeBOC operations. There has been no clearance of imported consignments through WeBOC.
Sources said the Project Director WeBOC had sent around six reminders to the Information Management System (IMS) Department, Islamabad as well as Network & Structure Team in Islamabad mentioning the state of equipment and requested immediate replacement of equipment.
The storage of images of the WeBOC system stopped operating declining access to any of the images including documents filed by the importers, images of important documents such as FTA, SROs etc. Chief Collector Appraisement Abdul Rasheed Shaikh advised the formations to stop all clearance for the moment to save the larger trouble.
All the perishable goods such as medicines, vaccines etc processed through Immediate Clearance Goods (ICG) at all the airports could also not be cleared and the same were stored at sheds on the airport.
Just the consignments processed through the Green Channel were cleared while the consignments through Yellow and Red Channel were not processed. Only 30 percent of consignments are cleared through the green channel.
Customnews.pk learnt that WeBOC’s Storage Area Network consists of 10 hard discs, of which two hard discs shutdown last month, while two more shutdown on Saturday.
It was found that the warranty of the equipment expired last year while a support & maintenance contract with IBM ended about 5 months ago, which was not renewed as then Chief PRAL Ms. Rana did not considered it important.
Since there was no maintenance contract, the support and restoration team did not respond. However, by the evening, IBM agreed to send support staff and restoration work was started.
Given the state of equipment and concerned authorities’ towards this important issue, the entire WeBOC system is feared to collapse anytime.