Over $100 mil­lion in il­le­gal drugs has been seized by the T&T Coast Guard in the past year.

Speak­ing at the 57th com­mis­sion­ing an­niver­sary at the Coast Guard’s Staubles Bay base in Ch­aguara­mas yes­ter­day, T&T Coast Guard Com­mand­ing Of­fi­cer Dou­glas Archer said in­creased pa­trols around the coast had led to the seizure of $102 mil­lion in il­le­gal nar­cotics.

“The Coast Guard has been able to pre­vent nar­cotics with an es­ti­mat­ed street val­ue in ex­cess of $102 mil­lion, pre­vent­ed them from com­ing ashore in T&T. These in­stances give us the re­solve to con­tin­ue our fight against il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty at sea,” he said.

Archer said the in­creased num­ber of il­le­gal im­mi­grants had al­so led to the in­creased pa­trols.

He said some 1,600 pa­trols were con­duct­ed in the past year, a 110 per cent in­crease in pa­trols over the pre­vi­ous year. He said the Coast Guard al­so com­plet­ed as many as 85 search and res­cues and at­tend­ed to 76 med­ical in­ci­dents.

Archer said the Coast Guard has an arrange­ment with the yacht­ing com­mu­ni­ty and is seek­ing to es­tab­lish the same type of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

He called on le­git­i­mate fish­er­men to make con­tact with the Coast Guard and pro­vide in­for­ma­tion on their lo­ca­tion, the num­ber of per­sons on board and length of time at sea so they could bet­ter re­spond in times of emer­gency.

“It al­lows for ef­fec­tive re­sponse,” he said.

In the past few weeks, the Coast Guard had come un­der heavy fire af­ter sev­en fish­er­men from Or­ange Val­ley were robbed on in Gulf of Paria of their out­board en­gines and thrown over­board. Five of the men drowned and their bod­ies were re­cov­ered but two of them re­main miss­ing.

“Even when you don’t see us, we are there. Pira­cy is un­ac­cept­able,” Archer said.

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young added his voice in sup­port of the work of the Coast Guard. He said the coun­try’s radar sys­tem was work­ing and that up­grades were ex­pect­ed soon to im­prove the se­cu­ri­ty pa­ra­me­ters.

“We, the Gov­ern­ment, will al­so be push­ing to get GPS track­ing de­vices in ves­sels that would al­so as­sist us,” he said.

“Our radar sys­tem is work­ing, we are in the process of up­grad­ing with two sets of up­grades and to rein­tro­duce some equip­ment that went for ser­vic­ing that would great­ly fa­cil­i­tate our ca­pa­bil­i­ties.”

He pre­sent­ed him­self as the first line of de­fence to the Coast Guard. “As a cit­i­zen of T&T, I feel a sense of pride that even though on the glob­al scale we are a very, very small twin-is­land state, we are proud, sov­er­eign,” he said.

He con­demned those who “have no prob­lem spread­ing the most ma­li­cious false­hoods and dis­in­for­ma­tion” when it came to the Coast Guard.

Young said one of the false­hoods was that the Coast Guard was not prop­er­ly util­is­ing its as­sets to pro­tect the coun­try.

“I know as a fact that every sin­gle point in time when you are called on to per­form your du­ties, it is with a sense of pride,” he said.

Young said even in “times of lit­tle” the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing the Coast Guard.

“In times when we have to spread our re­sources, we will en­sure that you have what you need to pro­tect our bor­ders,” he said.

Young de­nounced the politi­cians that sail by Staubles Bay and take pho­tographs of the ves­sels docked at the pier as ev­i­dence that the boats are moored in­stead of pa­trolling the bor­ders.

“We know that you have to dock to change crews and take on sup­plies,” he said.

“I un­der­stand the dif­fi­cul­ties that you face. I stand with you.”