Tired Drivers Stuck at Border, Carriers Count Losses – Customs Promises to Solve Problem

According to the president of Linava Romas Austinskas, the situation is tragic, some drivers have been trapped at the border for several days.

“People are tired and angry indefinitely about Lithuania’s disability to solve problems quickly. Here is a mistake from the past, invisible. Computers on the server are getting old, they need to be managed from time to time,” R. Austinskas told BNS.

According to him, carriers suffer losses, they are obliged to deliver cargo on time, but they cannot.

While customs promises the systems will be restored by 2pm, Linava says the works have been postponed to Monday, so only then can the systems be expected to be restored.

Linava calls on Minister Skaistė to restore non-working IT servers as soon as possible

The Lithuanian National Association of Road Carriers Linava makes a public appeal to Finance Minister Gintarė Skaistė and urges to restore the IT systems of the Customs Department, which have not been operational for four days, as soon as possible. According to the comment, carriers are outraged by the fact that they are feeding off only promises, and this morning it was reported that the completion of IT rebuilding work was postponed to Monday, although carriers continue to post losses.

According to Linava, a particularly critical situation is developing on the Belarusian side: the number of trucks waiting in line overnight has risen to 2,100. The situation on the Lithuanian side is similar to yesterday: about 300 trucks are stuck in customs internal.

Also, the queue on the Belarusian side can be even longer, as the country has traditionally put weight restrictions on heavy vehicles on its roads at this time of year, and part of the roads are closed due to snowmelt. spring.

According to Roma Austinskas, president of the Linava Association, this morning Customs Department officials reported that the end of the reconstruction of computer systems will be postponed to Monday, March 29, and the data will be transferred over the weekend, as it does. they don’t go as fast as expected.

“It just came to our notice then. We listened to them on the fourth day. The company is facing enormous difficulties due to several faulty servers and the Ministry of Finance is not even trying to address this critical issue. Therefore, we publicly ask Minister Gintare Skaistė to solve this problem as soon as possible. After all, trucks cannot stop at the border for a week. Does this mean that a company only needs to pay taxes? Do you have to solve the problems yourself? “, R. Austinskas is angry .

According to him, this is an unprecedented case. It has never been the case that IT systems have not been repaired for so long. The current situation is reminiscent of a few years ago, when all documents were manipulated manually.

“Drivers are already very angry and carriers continue to post losses. They will be huge. It’s not just € 300 a day of downtime per tractor. The other part of the loss will be due to specific obligations of carriers under freight contracts. , the absolute majority of which are past due with customers. The association has already received calls to present a request to the relevant institutions as soon as possible and ask the State to compensate the losses suffered, since this is the fault of the computer systems that they don’t work, ”says R. Austinskas.

Customs promises that the systems will be operational at 2 pm

According to the Belarusian State Border Committee, more than 700 trucks wait in Medininkai on the Belarusian side and more than 500 in Lavoriškės. More than 1960 trucks wait in line at all checkpoints in Belarus.

“Customs has taken action. On the first day, 88 trucks were brought to Lithuania via Medininkai mail, yesterday 210 and yesterday 380. Because when the system is not working, the business continuity procedure was applied and the Documents are submitted on paper. Although customs has improved throughput, smugglers are also not taking advantage and we have stopped the smuggling of cigarettes instead of cars through the new free lane that has been created. This is the situation today ”Says Vitas Volungevičius, Head of the Communications Division of the Customs Department.

On Wednesday, Customs reported that the MDAS declaration processing system has been inoperative since Tuesday due to a technical failure, which should be corrected on Wednesday.

The website now informs the website that MDAS, NKTS, IDAIS, and other customs information systems will not be available to consumers for longer than planned due to the scale of the rebuilding work. And the job is expected to be finished by March 26 at 2 p.m.

“According to the latest information, the system update is scheduled for today after 2 pm. If there is a positive or negative response, we will report it immediately on the customs page among the hot topics,” assured V. Volungenvičius.

It states that there are no queues for Belarus from the Lithuanian side.

“Customs have reorganized work so that goods vehicles can be exported at the border if they do not want to export goods to the Russian Federation or Belarus at internal customs,” explained the customs representative.

Lithuanian Customs apologizes for the inconvenience caused to entrepreneurs and drivers, and the staff of the Customs Information Systems Center makes every effort to restore the information systems to operation as soon as possible.