Customs officers acting under the directions of Customs Investigation Bureau (CIB) Deputy Director of Customs (DDC) Tilak Perera and Superintendent of Customs Parakrama Basnayake examined the goods in the presence of the local agents recently in the Orugodawatte Container Examination Bay, as they were suspicious about the undue delay on the part of the consignee to claim it.
CIB officers said that the local consignee, a famous computer firm had disclaimed the cargo, which was originally declared as one 40-foot container with a submitted value of 650,000 rupees. However, when the officers examined the cargo last week at the yard, they found two 40-foot containers with 60 electro-mechanically operated hospital beds, 52 bedside tables, a large amount of twin bed mattresses, suture material, dressings, medical tape, crutches, and other goods.
The beds have an electrically operated devise in the middle, which can be used to hoist the bed up and down.
"It is obvious that this is meant for some kind of injury treatment unit. There were no pharmaceutical goods.
This was for treating injury cases. Because preliminary investigations are still not complete, we do not know to whom it was actually meant for. And it is still too early to say that," a CIB officer said.
"We think the goods found in both containers were heavily undervalued. The declared value is Rs. 650,000. But the beds alone cost much more," he said.
The stock was shipped from Vancouver, Canada and sent by a Tamil resident in Toronto and arrived here in August. "We have some reservations about the case as nobody wants to claim it. We have issued summons to several people and more details will be uncovered soon," he said.
