Donated glasses seized by customs

Donated glasses seized by customs

Under the auspices of Bali's Yayasan Kemanusiaan Indonesia
(YKI)/John Fawcett Eye Foundation, a community drive was launched
in October 2005 to collect unwanted, used eyeglasses from
residents and visitors. Donated to the foundation, these cast-off
glasses are repaired, gauged and given away (after proper
assessment and doctor prescription) to needy Balinese men, women
and children across the island.

As part of this campaign, hundreds of posters were distributed
across the island and pleas were made to visitors to bring
unwanted eyeglasses when they visit Bali. To date, the campaign
has been a great success.

This month, two Australian visitors each arrived with more
than 300 pairs of eyeglasses as donations. The visitor arriving
on Dec. 13 cleared customs with no problem, simply by showing the
campaign poster. On arrival on Dec. 14, with three boxes labeled
with the same poster, a visitor had the donations confiscated for
duty payment.

In the second case, the customs officer, who refused to give
any identification further than Pak Wayan, would not provide any
written regulation or calculation for importing these used items
for donation. He claimed that duty on the donated glasses would
have to be determined by his "boss" or by providing letters from
three different government agencies to grant duty-free clearance.
Clearly this is meant to intimidate a non-Indonesian speaking
visitor into just "paying up".

Certainly, these glasses have no commercial value, as they are
useless to any other than the intended recipients. If there is a
regulation against importing such donations in such small
quantities, perhaps it should be reviewed. And if there is not
really an issue here, perhaps we can conclude that Pak Wayan was
just fishing for some year-end pocket money.

To date, we have been unable to find assistance to get the
glasses released. In fact, we have found more parallel stories --
even to the point that donations such as this were held at
customs until the donor returned to Australia and had to take the
goods back! Certainly embarrassing, inefficient, expensive and
counter to the spirit of community assistance.

DEBE CAMPBELL, Public Relations Volunteer, YKI "I Can See Clearly",
Community Campaign, Denpasar