KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

With the Gov­ern­ment’s six-month ban on the ex­port of scrap met­als ex­pect­ed to end in the com­ing weeks, the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion (CED) is still un­cov­er­ing stolen Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices (TSTT) ca­bles and ma­chin­ery in con­tain­ers which were des­ig­nat­ed for ex­port be­fore the ban kicked in.

Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert made the dis­clo­sure as he com­mis­sioned the $3 mil­lion CED build­ing and $ 7 mil­lion jet­ty at King’s Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, on Tues­day. The build­ing re­places the di­lap­i­dat­ed con­tain­er of­fice that CED of­fi­cers had oc­cu­pied a few hun­dred me­ters away.

On Au­gust 12, 2022, the Gov­ern­ment en­act­ed a six-month ban on ex­port­ing old and scrap met­al to clamp down on an in­dus­try where some deal­ers were steal­ing from pri­vate and State com­pa­nies to sell.

Im­bert re­vealed that the ban left ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100 con­tain­ers of scrap iron strand­ed at ports in Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas. He said as part of the clam­p­down on the il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty in the in­dus­try, the Min­istry of Fi­nance or­dered cus­toms of­fi­cers to re-ex­am­ine the con­sign­ments of scrap met­als to de­ter­mine if there were any stolen items.

“We have dis­cov­ered, dur­ing this ex­er­cise, stolen ar­ti­cles such as cop­per, clear­ly stolen from TSTT and oth­er stolen items such as pumps and oth­er ma­chin­ery stolen from com­pa­nies with­in the en­er­gy sec­tor,” Im­bert said.

The CED and po­lice un­stuffed 50 per cent of the con­tain­ers and will check the oth­ers soon, he not­ed.

Last year, busi­ness as­so­ci­a­tions and oth­ers ex­pressed con­cern that the Cus­toms Di­vi­sion was on­ly scan­ning 17 per cent of con­tain­ers at the ports and that some of the scan­ners were not work­ing.

Yes­ter­day, Im­bert re­vealed that the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board (CTB) had is­sued an In­ter­na­tion­al Ten­der No­tice for the sup­ply, de­liv­ery, in­stal­la­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of four large-scale Non-In­tru­sive In­spec­tion High/Medi­um Mo­bile X-ray Sys­tems. He said the CED and CTB are en­gag­ing in­ter­est­ed par­ties with an­tic­i­pa­tion of com­plet­ing the process by the end of Feb­ru­ary.

Im­bert ac­knowl­edged that T&T sits on a drug traf­fick­ing cor­ri­dor link­ing drug-pro­duc­ing re­gions in Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca with the large drug-con­sum­ing mar­kets in North Amer­i­ca.

“This traf­fic has gen­er­at­ed high lev­els of vi­o­lence and gang-re­lat­ed crime in the coun­try. As the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty mo­bilis­es to counter these ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties, it is im­per­a­tive that the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion up­grade its fleet of mo­bile scan­ners to pro­vide en­hanced non-in­tru­sive in­spec­tion cov­er­age of im­ports and ex­ports,” he said.

While tran­sit sheds and pri­vate ware­hous­es as­sist trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion and rev­enue col­lec­tion, Im­bert said the min­istry is al­so aware that they form part of bor­der se­cu­ri­ty. There­fore, the min­istry has be­gun work­ing to fa­cil­i­tate the in­spec­tion and im­proved bor­der se­cu­ri­ty ef­fi­cien­cy at all tran­sit sheds and pri­vate ware­hous­es.

He said it is prepar­ing a Re­quest for Quo­ta­tion to ac­quire Cab­i­net X-Ray equip­ment which can scan bar­rels and crates, and trace de­tec­tion and chem­i­cal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tems to en­sure the se­cured, mon­i­tored and reg­u­lat­ed op­er­a­tions. Oth­er mea­sures in­clude the reg­u­lar change of all se­cu­ri­ty locks and the in­stal­la­tion of im­proved and in­de­pen­dent CCTV cov­er­age of op­er­a­tions by the CED.

He said the CED and Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment had iden­ti­fied Queen’s Wharf, Port-of-Spain, as a high-risk area where there is the smug­gling of weapons, drugs, al­co­hol, to­bac­co prod­ucts and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals. In re­sponse, the CED iden­ti­fied mea­sures to en­hance bor­der se­cu­ri­ty at the in­stal­la­tion, in­clud­ing strength­en­ing the en­try/ex­it gates and pa­ra­me­ter walls to re­strict ve­hic­u­lar traf­fic and es­tab­lish­ing a unit of the Pre­ven­tive Branch to fa­cil­i­tate joint op­er­a­tions.

The CED will al­so cre­ate the In­ter­nal Af­fairs Unit (IAU), head­ed by the As­sis­tant Comp­trol­ler, Reg­u­la­to­ry Au­dit, a po­si­tion cre­at­ed by the Cab­i­net years ago but nev­er filled. The comp­trol­ler will over­see the op­er­a­tions of the Post Au­dit Unit (PAU) and IAU to com­bat cor­rup­tion with­in the CED and in­ves­ti­gate im­porters and ex­porters. Im­bert said the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion is al­so part­ner­ing with the Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion agency for train­ing on sev­er­al op­er­a­tions, in­clud­ing con­tain­er track­ing, which helps the US pro­file ship­ping com­ing to its ports.