The Bureau of Customs-Port of Manila (BoC-PoM) officially Tuesday started auctioning off abandoned cargoes containing 40 units of motorcycles, household effects and other assorted consumer goods.

Lawyer Arnel Alcaraz, PoM district collector, said the items sold to the public were those opened and examined by the bureau’s personnel with an estimated value of P12 million that will help them meet their collection quota.

“Stakeholders are not complaining and instead they commended our office because we are doing something. We will not give up the fight until we meet the targeted revenue collections,” Alcaraz said in an interview.

The public auction sale began at 1:30 p.m. at the PoM building that were participated by several registered bidders. The cargoes were sourced from Hong Kong, China and other countries of origin and they entered the country through PoM.

The cargoes’ contents were 1,654 boxes of blank cds and cd casing, 329 pieces of car accessories, 40,000 kgs. of ceramic tiles, 40 units of 150 cc Yamaha motorcycles, and two units of 50 cc Yamaha scooters, among others.

“The auction of these abandoned items was stored in the 32 out of the 80 container vans that we inspected more than a month now. This is an initial venture of our district collector. Henceforth, we will continue having this regular auction sale,” Orencio Baranda, PoM auction division head, said.

He said 37 containers vans of flour are also soon to be auctioned off upon the recommendations of the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI).

“Our findings showed that it’s unfit for human consumption so we will sell it to public for them to use it as animal feeds.”

Baranda said they were ordered by Alcaraz to zero in on the disposal of overstaying cargoes that’s why they requested for 10 more examiners to conduct an inventory and examination of cargoes on a weekly basis.