The T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion has rec­om­mend­ed to Gov­ern­ment that there must be in­creased fo­cus and in­spec­tion at the coun­try’s var­i­ous bor­ders, es­pe­cial­ly at the ports and with­in the Free Trade Zone to clamp down on il­lic­it trade and oth­er nu­mer­ous forms of crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

In a state­ment the or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so ad­vis­ing that there be leg­isla­tive re­form to en­sure the “penal­ties for smug­gling are in line with the na­ture of the crime”.

The TTMA al­so said there must be a ref­er­ence price sys­tem to treat with the po­ten­tial for un­der-de­c­la­ra­tions as it com­mend­ed the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion on the re­cent seizures of con­tra­band.

TTMA’s pres­i­dent Tri­cia Coos­al said in ad­di­tion to seiz­ing arms and am­mu­ni­tion, mem­bers of the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor hopes there will al­so be a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in il­lic­it items such as al­co­hol, clean­ing items, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, and to­bac­co prod­ucts.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion said il­lic­it trade is a threat to all facets of this coun­try, in­clud­ing the lives of the cit­i­zens and the econ­o­my.

TTMA has rec­om­mend­ed that Gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers in­creased train­ing for en­force­ment of­fi­cials (eg cus­toms and po­lice of­fi­cers) where nec­es­sary as this is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for the de­tec­tion of il­lic­it trade by lo­cal of­fi­cials, since smug­glers use var­i­ous means to im­port their goods.

The or­gan­i­sa­tion is al­so call­ing for in­creased col­lab­o­ra­tion among lo­cal, re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies – lo­cal agen­cies such as Board of In­land Rev­enue, Chem­istry, Food and Drugs Di­vi­sion; Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion, Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, In­tel­lec­tu­al Prop­er­ty Of­fice, In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion and the To­bac­co Con­trol Unit which it said must work to­geth­er.

“As it is like­ly that per­sons are in­volved in il­lic­it trade of var­i­ous items si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly (eg, hu­man traf­fick­ers may al­so be smug­gling al­co­holic bev­er­ages or coun­ter­feit cloth­ing). Re­gion­al agen­cies such as the Caribbean Cus­toms Law En­force­ment Coun­cil (CCLEC), and in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies such as IN­TA and In­ter­pol can al­so pro­vide as­sis­tance,” the TTMA said.