DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Two out of four new­ly ac­quired Smiths De­tec­tion heavy com­mer­cial ve­hi­cle scan­ners have of­fi­cial­ly been in­tro­duced to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and se­cu­ri­ty at the na­tion’s ports. The com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny oc­curred yes­ter­day at the Port of Port-of-Spain, with the re­main­ing two set to be in­stalled at the Port of Point Lisas.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert led the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny, joined by Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Port Au­thor­i­ty chair­man Lyle Alexan­der, and act­ing Comp­trol­ler of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, Ri­ad Ju­man.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the scan­ners, which cost of US$12.9 mil­lion (TT$87 mil­lion), will en­hance the de­tec­tion of il­le­gal con­tra­band, nar­cotics, and weapons.

He said the new scan­ners sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, pro­cess­ing up to 25 con­tain­ers per hour, com­pared to the pre­vi­ous fixed scan­ner, which could han­dle on­ly 60 con­tain­ers per day.

“These x-ray screen­ing sys­tems are de­signed for ease of op­er­a­tion and, at full ca­pac­i­ty, can scan up to 25 con­tain­er trucks per hour in mo­bile scan­ning mode and up to 100 trucks per hour in pass-through mode,” Im­bert said.

The scan­ners should fa­cil­i­tate rapid threat iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with­out man­u­al in­spec­tions, bet­ter sup­port trade, pro­vide re­al-time analy­sis, and of­fer flex­i­ble de­ploy­ment due to their mo­bil­i­ty.

Im­bert al­so high­light­ed the scan­ner’s high pen­e­tra­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ty, not­ing that it can scan through 300 mil­lime­tres (12 inch­es) of steel, dis­tin­guish­ing or­gan­ic and in­or­gan­ic ma­te­ri­als with ad­justable scan­ning heights, an­gles, and mul­ti­ple scan­ning modes.

While Sinanan stat­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s goal is to scan 75 per cent of all con­tain­ers to align with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, Ju­man said the aim is to reach 100 per cent of con­tain­ers. To ad­dress health and safe­ty con­cerns—par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ries that ra­di­a­tion ex­po­sure may af­fect male fer­til­i­ty—a spe­cialised ra­di­a­tion com­mit­tee will be es­tab­lished.

This com­mit­tee will be chaired by the Min­istry of Health’s ra­di­a­tion pro­tec­tion of­fi­cer and will in­clude a ra­di­a­tion safe­ty of­fi­cer sta­tioned at the port along with cus­toms of­fi­cials.

“This is one of the rea­sons for that com­mit­tee, to make sure every­body’s safe. I can’t say if the union might, in the fu­ture, want to make some ob­jec­tion, but right now there is no is­sue what­so­ev­er,” Im­bert said.

Each scan­ner will be op­er­at­ed by two peo­ple plus a dri­ver, or just two peo­ple in re­mote set­tings. Mean­while, the fi­nance min­is­ter does not an­tic­i­pate sab­o­tage of the equip­ment.

“This is go­ing to be hand­ed over to the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, and I cer­tain­ly hope that they would have prop­er safe­guards in place. I don’t think there’ll be sab­o­tage.”

As for main­te­nance, the sup­pli­er has been con­tract­ed to main­tain the equip­ment and train cus­toms work­ers. Once the con­tract ex­pires, cus­toms of­fi­cials will take over main­te­nance du­ties.

While the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty wel­comes greater ef­fi­cien­cy, the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) has ex­pressed frus­tra­tion over what it calls un­fair sus­pi­cion of busi­ness own­ers im­port­ing con­tra­band.

DO­MA pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud ar­gued that the in­flux of il­le­gal items is due to porous bor­ders, not con­tain­er ship­ments. He point­ed out that the 25,000 miss­ing rounds of am­mu­ni­tion from the De­fence Force did not en­ter through busi­ness own­ers’ con­tain­ers.

“We un­der­stand the need to scan all these con­tain­ers, we have no prob­lem with it. But you are scan­ning con­tain­ers of pow­dered milk, rice, and Chi­nese-man­u­fac­tured goods, de­vot­ing re­sources that seem mis­al­lo­cat­ed when guns and am­mu­ni­tion are com­ing from of­fi­cial sources,” Aboud said. He urged au­thor­i­ties to fo­cus on bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and safe­guard­ing am­mu­ni­tion stor­age fa­cil­i­ties in­stead.

Im­bert added that the scan­ners at Point Lisas will be com­mis­sioned in due course.