Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@guardian.co.tt

One of the coun­try’s largest drone re­tail­ers is call­ing on the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion to ful­ly ex­plain the re­stric­tions on the im­por­ta­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy.

The own­er of Is­land Hob­bies on Wednes­day said right now the mar­ket is ner­vous, as many po­ten­tial cus­tomers are now won­der­ing if it is even le­gal to own and op­er­ate a drone in light of the re­stric­tions.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that some couri­er com­pa­nies were warn­ing their cus­tomers that drones bought on­line, through a sky box, can now be seized by Cus­toms and Ex­cise un­less a per­mit is ob­tained be­fore ship­ping them.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the per­mit is to be ob­tained from the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (TATT).

But in speak­ing with re­tail­ers, they told Guardian Me­dia that they are un­sure if this per­mit is need­ed for all drones or those over a spec­i­fied weight.

This un­cer­tain­ty, they said, is al­so be­ing passed on to the con­sumer.

Own­er of Is­land Hob­bies, George Tan­nous, said the on­ly in­for­ma­tion he re­ceived was through the me­dia.

“What they could do is ad­vise peo­ple that are sell­ing these drones, send out a cir­cu­lar on it stat­ing that if we sell to any cus­tomers, they can fill out the rel­e­vant forms and go to TATT. But they haven’t con­tact­ed me, and I sell thou­sands of drones. All I saw is what you saw on the news,” Tan­nous said.

Asked about the drones cur­rent­ly on his shelves, Tan­nous said those have al­ready passed Cus­toms and Ex­cise and there­fore, they have no au­thor­i­ty on what has been cleared al­ready. How­ev­er, he said that is an as­sump­tion he is mak­ing due to a lack of in­for­ma­tion.

“Any­body that comes to buy a drone now, they get a bit wor­ried be­cause they think they are break­ing the law. There are many types of drones that fall un­der that weight brack­et, and that type of drone, those big­ger ones are not an every­day sell­er but it’s a type of niche mar­ket for that type of drone, for more pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy,” Tan­nous ex­plained.

The weight brack­et he re­ferred to can be found in the rules gov­ern­ing drone use and own­er­ship in the Civ­il Avi­a­tion (No. 19) Un­manned Air­craft Sys­tems Reg­u­la­tions. This states: “All drones weigh­ing 750 grams (1.6 pounds) or more must be reg­is­tered with the CAA (Civ­il Avi­a­tion Au­thor­i­ty).”

But re­tail­ers say they need clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether the per­mit be­ing man­dat­ed by Cus­toms and Ex­cise will ap­ply to these heav­ier drones or all vari­a­tions of the prod­uct.

Tan­nous said, “We have hun­dreds of drones. A lot of them are lighter than that cat­e­go­ry they are spec­i­fied. With the big­ger ones, all we will do is ad­vise peo­ple if you are pur­chas­ing them the law is that you have to reg­is­ter, which is not a prob­lem be­cause peo­ple are do­ing it, it’s just we need the in­for­ma­tion to ad­vise them on the right way for­ward.”

With Christ­mas com­ing up, Tan­nous said this must be ad­dressed im­me­di­ate­ly.

“Peo­ple ask a lot of ques­tions now, es­pe­cial­ly over the last cou­ple weeks, if it’s il­le­gal to buy a 500-to-600-dol­lar drone, so I think what Cus­toms need to do is be a lit­tle more spe­cif­ic and let’s not scare the peo­ple too much. You need to ed­u­cate peo­ple more be­cause it can af­fect busi­ness in the long run,” he added.

An­oth­er re­tail­er, who asked to re­main anony­mous, told Guardian Me­dia that this will great­ly af­fect small­er com­pa­nies and peo­ple who are seek­ing to cut out the mid­dle per­son and pur­chase their drone off plat­forms such as Ama­zon.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the per­mit re­quires that the buy­er dis­close the se­r­i­al num­ber of the drone.

How­ev­er, the re­tail­er said when buy­ing drones off Ama­zon, the se­r­i­al num­ber is not dis­closed un­til the prod­uct is in hand.

This means that the item will have to be sent to a third par­ty, who will then have to open the pack­ag­ing and dis­close the se­r­i­al num­ber be­fore it can be al­lowed to en­ter the coun­try.

Sev­er­al at­tempts were made to con­tact the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion and the Min­istry of Fi­nance for clar­i­ty yes­ter­day. How­ev­er, no one re­spond­ed.

Guardian Me­dia asked Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds to con­tex­tu­alise why au­thor­i­ties have been crack­ing down on im­por­ta­tion and if it is linked to a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty con­cern.

He said, “Cus­toms is with­in the purview of the Min­istry of Fi­nance, so I am un­able to com­ment on any op­er­a­tional ac­tiv­i­ty of the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion. What I can say is out­side of that is that drones have been used for in­cur­sions in­to the se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments at the na­tion’s pris­ons, so it is cer­tain­ly a mat­ter of con­cern to us, and they have been used to de­liv­er items of con­tra­band and once they are used in that way, they can be used in any oth­er sim­i­lar ways.”

Tan­nous, mean­while, said he ful­ly un­der­stands the se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns and sup­ports ac­count­abil­i­ty. How­ev­er, he said it must be done in a trans­par­ent man­ner.