Chester Sam­bra­no

The Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day heard that some 19,000 con­tain­ers en­tered T&T over an eight-month pe­ri­od with­out be­ing checked by cus­toms of­fi­cials.

The rea­son - there are no longer any work­ing scan­ners at any of the ma­jor sea­ports across the coun­try.

The JSC was giv­en the star­tling in­for­ma­tion when it met top of­fi­cials of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to dis­cuss the fac­tors that are con­tribut­ing to the preva­lence of il­le­gal firearms and gun vi­o­lence in this coun­try.

Soon enough, Cus­toms found them­selves in the JSC’s fir­ing line.

From the get-go, Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms Vidyah Mar­cial said the di­vi­sion was in des­per­ate need of new scan­ners and staff.

The JSC was told its or­gan­i­sa­tion­al struc­ture called for 700 staff mem­bers but at the mo­ment they have on­ly 272 ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers and 82 re­cent­ly hired and act­ing of­fi­cers.

“Hu­man re­source is a ma­jor prob­lem,” act­ing Deputy Comp­trol­ler Yas­min Har­ris said.

As it re­lat­ed to scan­ners, the Cus­toms of­fi­cials in­di­cat­ed that the scan­ners do­nat­ed by the Unit­ed States are not work­ing any­more and need to be re­placed.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the on­ly scan­ners we have op­er­a­tional are the ones in the bag­gage room at Pi­ar­co (In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port),” Har­ris said.

Comp­trol­ler Mar­cial went on to ex­plain that they had start­ed the process to ac­quire four new scan­ners at the cost of US1 mil­lion each.

JSC mem­ber, Sen­a­tor Nigel De Fre­itas, was not com­fort­ed by the scan­ner man­age­ment.

“The fact is it is be­ing said right now, and the TTPS (Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice) is tak­ing licks for it, that il­le­gal firearms are com­ing in through the le­gal ports of en­try and the ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that is cus­toms. What do you guys have to say for that?” he asked.

Har­ris said that they have re­sort­ed to phys­i­cal ex­am­i­na­tion of con­tain­ers by do­ing risk as­sess­ments and “un­for­tu­nate­ly, that is the best avail­able av­enue at this point in time.”

She said as an ex­am­ple, they have 14 bays at the Port of Port-of-Spain but can on­ly as­sign three of­fi­cers at a time to check the con­tain­ers as­signed to them. She said be­cause of that, their “ef­fi­cien­cy is com­pro­mised.”

But when De Fre­itas called for sta­tis­tics on how many con­tain­ers are be­ing scanned, com­mit­tee mem­bers were as­ton­ished by the dis­clo­sure.

Har­ris said they on­ly have the fixed scan­ner op­er­a­tional at the Port of Port-of-Spain and “for Jan­u­ary to Au­gust, we scanned 3,998.”

JSC chair­man Kei­th Scot­land in­ter­ject­ed and asked out of how many.

Har­ris said 23,000, ef­fec­tive­ly mean­ing 19,002 con­tain­ers had gone through the sys­tem unchecked.

That re­sult­ed in whis­tles and woos from com­mit­tee mem­bers.

Then there was some­what of a tongue-lash­ing tar­get­ed at the di­vi­sion.

It start­ed with mem­ber Ran­dall Mitchell, who took um­brage with the con­stant use of the word un­for­tu­nate.

“Do you ac­cept that the word is not un­for­tu­nate but the word is gross neg­li­gence on the part of the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion?”

That was fol­lowed by mem­ber Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy, who in­formed the Cus­toms of­fi­cials that she was “a lit­tle bit dis­turbed right now.”

Sen­a­tor Paul Richards was next to chime in with the crit­i­cism.

“I am very dis­ap­point­ed in what I have heard so far,” he said.

Quot­ing sta­tis­tics pro­vid­ed by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA,) Richards said as of 2021, the mar­ket val­ue of il­le­gal guns en­ter­ing this coun­try stood at $144 mil­lion.

“It’s caus­ing hav­oc in the coun­try, lit­er­al hav­oc,” he said.

But Comp­trol­ler Mar­cial said her di­vi­sion had not fall­en down on the job.

“We are re­al­ly try­ing, I know that is not suf­fi­cient, we have to get the job done,” she said.

She was then asked by mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal to grade her­self, and she said B-plus.

It was on­ly on Tues­day, while com­ment­ing on the num­ber of il­le­gal weapons seized by the TTPS while com­ing in­to the coun­try via le­gal ports of en­try dur­ing the past year, that act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Mc Don­ald Ja­cob asked, “Why don’t we call for the head of Cus­toms and oth­er per­sons to go?”

Ja­cob seemed to be ref­er­enc­ing the fact that while he was be­ing asked to step down due to the TTPS’ fail­ure to get a han­dle on crime, oth­er state en­ti­ties which were mis­man­ag­ing ar­eas of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty were not be­ing as­sessed sim­i­lar­ly.