The Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) says it is alarmed that 19,000 con­tain­ers en­tered T&T over an eight-month pe­ri­od with­out be­ing prop­er­ly scanned.

The TTMA’s state­ment came af­ter top of­fi­cials from the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion told a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment on Wednes­day that this sce­nario de­vel­oped be­cause of the lack of op­er­a­tional scan­ners and prop­er staff num­bers at the coun­try’s ports.

“Tra­di­tion­al­ly, TTMA has lob­bied for greater ef­fi­cien­cy on the port and has, in the past, wel­comed the in­tro­duc­tion of scan­ners to aid in this ef­fi­cien­cy. The re­ports of these scan­ners not work­ing are con­cern­ing and its neg­a­tive im­pact on the ease of do­ing busi­ness can­not be de­nied,” TTMA pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al stat­ed.

“There is al­so the chal­lenge of many il­le­gal items find­ing their way in­to the coun­try and in­to the hands of un­scrupu­lous per­sons. Im­por­tant­ly, as well, is the Gov­ern­ment not get­ting their due rev­enues based on the eva­sion of prop­er cus­toms du­ties to be ap­plied on goods,” she added.

Coos­al said with Christ­mas ap­proach­ing, this means the vol­ume of goods that must be moved on the port in­creas­es.

“De­lays due to in­ef­fi­cien­cies at the ports have a re­al cost to man­u­fac­tur­ers as com­pa­nies in­cur de­mur­rage and oth­er charges. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, with­out ef­fi­cien­cies that would al­low for the faster clear­ance of goods, it can re­sult in slow­ing of pro­duc­tion and ex­ports—all of which is not good for the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor that is grow­ing and meet­ing the call to ex­pand op­er­a­tions,” Coos­al stat­ed.

Com­ment­ing on the po­ten­tial in­crease in il­lic­it trade ac­tiv­i­ty as a re­sult of lim­it­ed func­tion­ing port scan­ners, Coos­al said, “The con­cern for con­sumers’ safe­ty is height­ened as il­lic­it trade is al­lowed to pro­lif­er­ate with­out the prop­er in­spec­tion of goods. These in­clude goods which have not been test­ed as safe for hu­man con­sump­tion or use and goods that do not have prop­er la­bels for con­sumers to un­der­stand what they are us­ing.”

The TTMA is call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to act “swift­ly to rec­ti­fy these in­ef­fi­cien­cies, which place an un­nec­es­sary bur­den on man­u­fac­tur­ers in their dai­ly op­er­a­tions.”

“Fur­ther, our mem­bers are al­ready fac­ing un­due de­lays with the move­ment of con­tain­ers on the ports, a mat­ter which we are work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly along­side the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties to re­solve. To have this mat­ter of non-op­ti­mal util­i­sa­tion of scan­ners and re­vert­ing to man­u­al in­spec­tion can fur­ther cre­ate prob­lems for man­u­fac­tur­ers. Such ac­tiv­i­ties can re­sult in the as­so­ci­a­tion falling short in re­al­is­ing its ob­jec­tive of dou­bling ex­ports by 2025,” Coos­al said.