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Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Hinds assures safety of borders as Indian variant found in Venezuela

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1386 days ago
20210602
National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds.

National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds.

Nicole Drayton

Gail Alexan­der

With the In­di­an vari­ant of the COVID-19 virus now de­tect­ed in neigh­bour­ing Venezuela, the Gov­ern­ment has as­sured that plans and op­er­a­tions to im­prove bor­der se­cu­ri­ty have been on­go­ing and are well un­der­way.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds gave the as­sur­ance Mon­day night when asked about bor­der se­cu­ri­ty.

It came af­ter Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro on Mon­day con­firmed the ar­rival of the In­di­an vari­ant in Venezuela ac­cord­ing to Al­ber­toNews. The cas­es en­tered through the south­west state of Apure near the bor­der with Colom­bia. Five women who re­turned to Venezuela from stud­ies in Colom­bia test­ed pos­i­tive for the In­di­an vari­ant.

The In­di­an vari­ant has killed over 303,720 peo­ple in In­dia and caused over 23 mil­lion cas­es there.

T&T has on­ly de­tect­ed cas­es of the UK vari­ant and the Brazil­ian vari­ant - the lat­ter first found in a sam­ple from a Venezue­lan mi­grant in April.

T&T’s bor­ders have been closed since March 2020.

On the In­di­an vari­ant ar­riv­ing “next door”, Hinds said all coun­tries face the risk of virus spread as a re­sult of move­ment.

“That’s al­ways a risk. All coun­tries are now deal­ing with it. T&T’s no dif­fer­ent. Once this virus and vari­ants ex­ist they can be trans­mit­ted from hu­man to hu­man, they’re pop­ping up all over,” he said.

Hinds said T&T, as an is­land na­tion, is be­set with many un­of­fi­cial ports of en­try but with­out clear sci­en­tif­ic proof, one couldn’t say for cer­tain that Venezue­lan mi­grants are a virus source.

“But we’re pay­ing at­ten­tion to all bor­ders,” he as­sured.

‘’We iden­ti­fied 15 key ar­eas to which we’re ap­ply­ing con­sid­er­a­tion as in­tel­li­gence in­for­ma­tion ad­vis­es those are the most ac­tive. We’ve mount­ed in­tel­li­gence-dri­ven bor­der pro­tec­tion op­er­a­tions aimed at stamp­ing out as far as pos­si­ble, il­le­gal en­try by oth­ers,’’ he said.

“As we ac­quire new naval as­sets we’ll be­come more ef­fec­tive at pro­tect­ing bor­ders. We con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing a radar sys­tem iden­ti­fy­ing ap­proach­ing ves­sels/air­craft, plus pa­trols along coasts at strate­gic points. As we move, those who want to beat the sys­tem al­so move, but we’re aware of this and tack­ling it head on,’’ he said.

“It’s my prayer we’re able to get the vac­cines we’ve been fight­ing to ob­tain and run an ag­gres­sive vac­cine pro­gramme as it’s clear that’s the re­al so­lu­tion to this se­ri­ous prob­lem of virus spread,’’ he said.

Hinds replied about the Venezue­lan fish­ing ves­sels which con­tin­ue en­ter­ing T&T de­spite bor­der clo­sure.

Hinds said au­thor­i­ties re­cent­ly rein­tro­duced ma­rine coastal and river­ine pa­trols.

“I’m head-oned giv­en our re­sources and in­for­ma­tion we’re tack­ling this prob­lem. We’ve in­ter­cept­ed ves­sels sev­er­al times with peo­ple at­tempt­ing to en­ter. It’s not just peo­ple, it’s about il­le­gal ma­te­ri­als in­clud­ing firearms, dan­ger­ous drugs. But it’s dy­nam­ic, a work in progress,’’ he said.


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