Rapheal John-Lall

A new scan­ner in­stalled at the Port of Port-of-Spain will im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy and in­crease trade lev­els, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day.Un­like the pre­vi­ous sys­tem which ex­am­ined two con­tain­ers an hour, the new scan­ner ex­am­ines 15 con­tain­ers an hour."This scan­ner will pro­vide for port ef­fi­cien­cy, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and the per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty of the men and women who work hard on the port."The sys­tem can de­tect il­le­gal con­tra­band and pro­hib­it­ed goods in con­tain­ers rapid­ly."It is mo­bile and can be re­lo­cat­ed for quick de­ploy­ment and is very ef­fec­tive. This will be func­tion­al as we go in­to the Christ­mas sea­son," the Prime Min­is­ter said at the com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the Lin­ear Ac­cel­er­a­tor X-Ray Scan­ning and De­tec­tion Sys­tem at Dock Road, Port-of-Spain.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said more scan­ners would be com­ing in the fu­ture.She added: "We have al­so had four con­tain­er scan­ners be­ing do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment."Those are sec­ond-hand and they are be­ing re­fur­bished and we should have those com­ing in and will roll them out in To­ba­go and oth­er ports."The Peo­ple's Re­pub­lic of Chi­na pro­vid­ed the scan­ner un­der a $25 mil­lion grant fund­ing agree­ment.

Al­though it had been made avail­able since 2003, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said se­ri­ous work to ac­cess the grant be­gan on­ly last year when Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping vis­it­ed T&T."The grant fund­ing is not a loan and on­ly re­cent­ly we dis­cov­ered it was sit­ting in our cof­fers. We do not need to re­pay the grant fund­ing. I said this was free mon­ey in a sense," she said.The Prime Min­is­ter said the con­tain­er scan­ner would lead to the re­duc­tion of clear­ance time and "will in­crease port traf­fic and com­pet­i­tive­ness, bet­ter and faster de­tec­tion of ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, in­crease rev­enue gen­er­a­tion ca­pac­i­ty and more mod­ern and ef­fi­cient use of hu­man re­sources."She said her ad­min­is­tra­tion was tak­ing a mul­ti­par­tite ap­proach to in­clude not on­ly gov­ern­ment, busi­ness and labour in the run­ning of the port but al­so oth­er sec­tors of so­ci­ety."In the past we spoke of the tri­par­tite ap­proach, now we are look­ing at the mul­ti­par­tite ap­proach," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

'Ini­tia­tives to mod­ernise the port'

Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said the chal­lenges on the port did not be­gin dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship but had been around for decades."We have had many is­sues, in­clud­ing the in­fra­struc­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tion and hu­man re­sources but these is­sues have been around for decades."It has tak­en this Gov­ern­ment to start the re­nais­sance of the Port of Port-of-Spain," he said.

Cadiz said sev­er­al short and medi­um-term ini­tia­tives were planned to mod­ernise the port."Any com­mer­cial port which can­not com­pete in the world, the work will go else­where and when that hap­pens there is a prob­lem."The on­ly way to solve that is to bring the port up to ef­fi­cien­cy, like the re­place­ment of out­dat­ed equip­ment," he added.