Joshua Seemu­n­gal

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the surg­ing homi­cide rate inch­ing to­wards 400, the ma­jor­i­ty of killings be­ing gun re­lat­ed, and the stag­ger­ing pres­ence of ap­prox­i­mate­ly 12,000 il­le­gal firearms in this coun­try, the car­go and con­tain­er scan­ners at the ports of Port-of-Spain and Point Lisas are ob­so­lete or non-func­tion­al, mak­ing the de­tec­tion of il­le­gal weapons and oth­er goods en­ter­ing the coun­try even more dif­fi­cult.

Act­ing Comp­trol­ler at Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion Vidya Mar­cial, re­spond­ing ex­clu­sive­ly to queries from the Sun­day Guardian, re­vealed the di­vi­sion’s is­sues with the scan­ners last Tues­day.

“The scan­ners are ob­so­lete. Those scan­ners were a do­na­tion from the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment. The mo­bile scan­ners are not func­tion­ing. The fixed scan­ner in Port-of-Spain is func­tion­ing,” Mar­cial ad­mit­ted in a frank in­ter­view. She is the first Comp­trol­ler at the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion for quite some time that spoke di­rect­ly to the me­dia on this very trou­bling is­sue that has plagued the coun­try’s ports for sev­er­al years.

“I sent out a re­quest to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) and Min­istry of Fi­nance. But re­mem­ber, we don’t have peo­ple in Trinidad who can pro­vide that, so it has to be out­sourced, and that will be a lit­tle tricky be­cause they have to get all the specs,” Mar­cial said.

“The specs have to be right and it has to be for what we want it for. So we’re work­ing on that. We did get some help from a US ad­vis­er. There’s a US ad­vis­er who is at­tached to the comp­trol­ler and they as­sist­ed us in putting to­geth­er some­thing.”

Vidya Marcial, Acting Comptroller of Customs and Excise Division.

EMBASSY OF THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA

Two sep­a­rate se­nior cus­toms sources, who spoke anony­mous­ly, con­firmed that the Port of Port-of-Spain on­ly has ac­cess to one fixed scan­ner, while the mo­bile scan­ners and fixed scan­ner at the Point Lisas Port are not op­er­a­tional.

“The mo­bile scan­ners are old and the con­tract to re­pair them with Massy is very cost­ly, giv­en the age and fre­quen­cy of down­time af­ter it’s re­paired. The cost does not make eco­nom­ic sense. These mo­bile scan­ners were do­nat­ed to Trinidad by the USA quite a while now, so the soft­ware has be­come ob­so­lete,” one of the sources said.

There is al­so a high­ly or­gan­ised (il­le­gal) sys­tem with­in the port in­volv­ing work­ers who al­low il­le­gal items to pass through and en­ter the coun­try, the source re­vealed.

“Lots of bar­rels are stolen from shed ten from the Port of Port-of-Spain. When the con­tain­ers are stuffed, the work­ers know ex­act­ly where to place the bar­rels of in­ter­est be­cause they are ex­pect­ing these and they take them out of the port. That’s a high­ly or­gan­ised (il­le­gal) sys­tem with­in the port.”

The sources said that with the con­stant and ef­fi­cient use of scan­ners, of­fi­cers could eas­i­ly dis­tin­guish be­tween dif­fer­ent com­modi­ties in a con­tain­er.

As an ex­am­ple, they said the scan­ners would be able to iden­ti­fy a bi­cy­cle in a 40-foot con­tain­er.

In its ab­sence, it makes it sig­nif­i­cant­ly eas­i­er for il­le­gal weapons and con­tra­band to pass un­no­ticed in con­tain­ers.

The Sun­day Guardian dis­cov­ered that the peren­ni­al prob­lems fac­ing the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion do not end there.

Oth­er chal­lenges make the work of the Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion oner­ous. In ad­di­tion to tech­no­log­i­cal short­com­ings, the di­vi­sion is fac­ing man­pow­er is­sues.

At present, the di­vi­sion is un­der­staffed by 40 per cent.

“We have 110 va­can­cies. I have asked for at least 100 new re­cruits…It’s still around that num­ber (60 per cent filled),” the Act­ing Comp­trol­ler said.

“What hap­pened is…I had pur­sued that (is­sue) with Fi­nance and PS, and they ad­ver­tised the posts. Can­di­dates were short­list­ed. They had in­ter­views. They had ex­ams. So, with ef­fect from June/Ju­ly, we start­ed to re­ceive of­fi­cers. To date, we’ve re­ceived about 30 new of­fi­cers/re­cruits.”

The non-func­tion­al and ob­so­lete scan­ners, the il­le­gal sys­tem in­volv­ing some work­ers al­low­ing con­tra­bands, il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion to pass, and the grave short­age of of­fi­cers are clear­ly putting a strain on the Di­vi­sion’s abil­i­ty to ef­fec­tive­ly car­ry out its job.

Customs Officers confiscated packets of contraband from a pirogue which was intercepted by the Coast Guard in 2021.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 87 per cent of mur­ders in Trinidad and To­ba­go are firearm-re­lat­ed, ac­cord­ing to Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice sta­tis­tics.

At a PNM Pub­lic Meet­ing in Bel­mont last Tues­day, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said the coun­try clear­ly has a prob­lem with guns.

“The SSA did a sur­vey and es­ti­mat­ed that there were 12,000 il­le­gal weapons in Trinidad and To­ba­go, and from the way it looks, it might very well be more,” he said.

He sought to as­sure those in at­ten­dance that the Gov­ern­ment has tak­en sev­er­al steps to at­tempt to pre­vent the en­trance and move­ment of il­le­gal firearms in­to and around Trinidad and To­ba­go.

This re­porter con­tact­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning and the min­istry’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions team on the mat­ter in­volv­ing the scan­ners and the short­age of of­fi­cers but there was no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

Port of Port-of-Spain

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

'Mil­lion-dol­lar in­vest­ment in scan­ners was to pro­vide added se­cu­ri­ty'

The Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion do­nat­ed four mo­bile ve­hi­cles and car­go in­spec­tion sys­tem (VACIS) scan­ners to the T&T Gov­ern­ment in April 2018.

Two scan­ners were as­signed to the Port of Point Portin, while the oth­er two were ex­pect­ed to be placed at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

It is un­cer­tain if they were.

At the un­veil­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the scan­ners at the Port of Point Lisas on April 18, 2018, the event’s fea­ture speak­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said, “The Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment in this ini­tia­tive is in­dica­tive of its deep com­mit­ment to bor­der se­cu­ri­ty and trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion. These mo­bile scan­ners can be used at oth­er lo­ca­tions for spe­cial op­er­a­tions. They will serve as an ef­fec­tive tool in as­sist­ing the Gov­ern­ment in pro­vid­ing added se­cu­ri­ty to the cit­i­zens of T&T.

“Cus­toms and Ex­cise of­fi­cers and guards have been trained in op­er­at­ing these mo­bile scan­ners and stand ready to car­ry out these func­tions ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly.”

Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­son falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

The Act­ing Comp­trol­ler at the time, Kathy-Ann Matthews al­so spoke high­ly of their pro­posed im­pact say­ing that “The Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion views the im­ple­men­ta­tion of these scan­ners as crit­i­cal and in­deed time­ly as we have seen the in­crease of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty and the im­por­ta­tion of con­tra­band via the use of con­tain­ers. The mo­bile scan­ners will be very ef­fec­tive in de­tect­ing con­tra­band in­tend­ed for im­port, ex­port or trans­port.”

Dur­ing his speech, Im­bert lament­ed that vi­o­lent crime, dri­ven by il­le­gal weapons and drugs, was af­fect­ing cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es.

He re­vealed that the com­pa­ny that man­u­fac­tured the scan­ners, Lei­dos Cor­po­ra­tion, was con­tact­ed to over­see in­stal­la­tion, main­te­nance, and tech­ni­cal sup­port.

Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the ini­tial train­ing and main­te­nance op­er­a­tions cost $16.6 mil­lion (TT), while a three-year main­te­nance and train­ing con­tract cost an­oth­er $9.9 mil­lion (TT).

That ini­tial con­tract ex­pired on Oc­to­ber 1, 2020.

Ac­cord­ing to a cus­toms source, the main­te­nance con­tract was giv­en to Massy.

While there are no sta­tis­tics read­i­ly avail­able for the num­ber of im­ports at the Port of Point Fortin for the year so far, as of Au­gust 8, 2002, there were 38,693 im­ports at the Port of Port-of-Spain, ac­cord­ing to the Port Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s web­site.

Containers at the Port of Port-of-Spain.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

Ex­port con­tain­ers al­so not be­ing ex­am­ined

The se­nior cus­toms and ex­cise di­vi­sion source, who spoke anony­mous­ly, said that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of ex­port con­tain­ers are al­so not be­ing ex­am­ined by of­fi­cers.

They said there are a few large com­pa­nies (names called) that have their ex­port con­tain­ers ex­am­ined by of­fi­cers, while oth­ers are part of a Vol­un­tary Com­pli­ance Pro­gram (VCP) ac­cord­ing to a doc­u­ment that the Sun­day Guardian ob­tained.

“Just look at the scrap met­al com­pounds on the high­way, for ex­am­ple. Every day you pass they are pack­ing those, with no of­fi­cers present,” the se­nior Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion source said.

With the Gov­ern­ment ban­ning the ex­port of scrap met­al ex­ports on Au­gust 12 for six months (un­til Feb­ru­ary 23, 2023), this means that scrap iron could still be leav­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly. The tem­po­rary scrap iron ban has al­so trig­gered fiery protests across the coun­try by scrap iron deal­ers who al­so staged a mo­tor­cade from San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain last Wednes­day, plead­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to re­verse their de­ci­sion.

In the last two years, but es­pe­cial­ly with­in the last nine months, the in­fra­struc­ture of the state’s util­i­ty com­pa­nies has been van­dalised by cop­per and met­al thieves.

Ac­cord­ing to Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les, the il­le­gal trade cost the state’s util­i­ty com­pa­nies ap­prox­i­mate­ly $25 mil­lion in the last two years.

Last week, Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed ex­clu­sive­ly that the il­le­gal cop­per and met­al ex­port trade in Trinidad and To­ba­go is part of an in­ter­na­tion­al crime op­er­a­tion with links to Venezuela and Chi­na.

Crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Dau­rius Figueira said, ac­cord­ing to his con­tacts, those in­volved in the trade in­clude lo­cal and Venezue­lan gangs, the Chi­nese mafia, and well-re­sourced busi­ness­es that are ex­port­ing the il­le­gal prod­uct main­ly to Chi­na.

Dr Figueira said the trade took off in Venezuela in 2017, but the Gov­ern­ment be­gan clamp­ing down on the trade be­cause of its im­pact on state in­fra­struc­ture.

He said the trade spread from Venezuela in­to Trinidad in the last two years. His con­tacts on the ground in­formed him that the ma­te­r­i­al is com­ing in­to T&T to get ex­port­ed il­le­gal­ly to Chi­na.

Chi­na is the world’s largest con­sumer of re­fined cop­per. His claims about the lo­cal trade’s con­nec­tion to Venezue­lan and Chi­nese crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions were sup­port­ed by sources close to the trade.

The sources, who spoke anony­mous­ly out of con­cern for their safe­ty, told the Sun­day Guardian that the lo­cal trade is be­ing dri­ven by an ‘un­der­world fig­ure with links to peo­ple in South Amer­i­ca’.

They said that the US mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar trade in­volves large amounts of cop­per and oth­er met­als be­ing brought across from Venezuela to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The met­als, ac­cord­ing to the sources, are then picked up in Care­nage, Ch­aguara­mas, and Ce­dros.

They are then stored and processed in se­cret lo­ca­tions in many ar­eas, in­clud­ing Point Fortin, Debe and Diego Mar­tin, be­fore be­ing shipped in con­tain­ers to Chi­na.

Two weeks ago, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said that since 2020, 218 peo­ple have been ar­rest­ed in re­la­tion to the theft of cop­per and met­als.

In 2020, he said, there were 58 re­ports of theft with 30 peo­ple ar­rest­ed, while in 2021, there were 87 re­ports of theft, with 52 ar­rests.

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter said the num­ber of re­ports and ar­rests in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly be­tween Jan­u­ary and Au­gust 2022, with 162 re­ports of theft and 136 ar­rests.

PSA–Out 33,000 po­si­tions on 15,000 hired

Ac­cord­ing to the Pres­i­den­tial Des­ig­nate of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Leroy Bap­tiste–the ma­jor­i­ty union rep­re­sent­ing Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers–the di­vi­sion is work­ing at half its ca­pac­i­ty and has been do­ing so for some time.

In fact, he claimed that the en­tire pub­lic ser­vice is un­der­manned.

Out of 33,000 avail­able po­si­tions in the pub­lic ser­vice, the ser­vice is be­ing manned by 15,000 pub­lic ser­vants, he claimed.

Bap­tiste claimed the civ­il ser­vice de­part­ment agen­cies and ser­vices are be­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly starved of re­sources.

“The gen­er­al act of gov­er­nance is that they are not fill­ing va­can­cies with­in the pub­lic ser­vice, and when there’s a com­men­su­rate drop in the lev­els of ser­vice, they then de­monise the ser­vice, as though the ser­vice is in­ef­fi­cient wher­ev­er you go,” Bap­tiste said.

“The end re­sult is that you have the ser­vice un­der­manned by virtue of the lit­er­al sab­o­tag­ing of the civ­il ser­vice by the Gov­ern­ment. And you know what they do? They spread the no­tion of an in­ef­fi­cient pub­lic ser­vice as a pre­text to en­gage in re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cis­es, which again, moves away the in­su­la­tion from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence in these au­thor­i­ties, whether it’s the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty(TTRA), the pro­posed Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty, a whole bunch of things they want to bring about.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bap­tiste, the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to bring an end to the civ­il ser­vice by re­mov­ing per­ma­nent jobs and hir­ing peo­ple on con­tracts.

“You have no pro­tec­tion what­so­ev­er and then the politi­cian turned king; It’s at his wish and com­mand. You ei­ther work or you’re un­em­ployed. I think that’s the sad state of af­fairs here,” he said.

“The next thing they do when they are starv­ing for man­pow­er, they al­so don’t en­gage in the nec­es­sary in­vest­ment in things like tech­nol­o­gy and best prac­tice to im­prove the lev­el of ser­vice.

“So you cre­ate this en­vi­ron­ment where you have the pop­u­la­tion con­tin­u­ous­ly crit­i­ciz­ing the pub­lic of­fi­cers as though the pub­lic of­fi­cer is just in­ef­fi­cient. They came from Mars nah (sic), this bunch of in­ef­fi­cient peo­ple just run­ning the coun­try, and there­fore, you need to get rid of them.”

PM: De­spite chal­lenges Govt did not fire a sin­gle pub­lic ser­vant

At a PNM Pub­lic Meet­ing in Bel­mont on Tues­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ty was to pre­serve as many jobs as pos­si­ble.

He said de­spite many chal­lenges the Gov­ern­ment did not fire a sin­gle pub­lic ser­vant dur­ing the height of the pan­dem­ic.

“Our fight was to be in a po­si­tion to pay them every month and I dare say, thank God, we have been able to do so. And we did that by ex­tract­ing more rev­enue from the source of our rev­enue. And we al­so said we won’t go to the IMF. If you qual­i­fy to bor­row, they will lend you the mon­ey, but they will lay down some terms and con­di­tions for that mon­ey. And the first term they will lay down for Trinidad and To­ba­go will be, cut your pub­lic ser­vice,” the Prime Min­is­ter said.

“So every pub­lic ser­vant who want to run up and down be­hind marchers, and close down coun­try and shut down coun­try, the biggest risk that you face is a sit­u­a­tion where the Gov­ern­ment can­not pay its bills and will have to go the lender as a last re­sort, and they will say here’s $300 mil­lion but you have to cut the pub­lic ser­vice by 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 40 per cent.”

The Prime Min­is­ter said he un­der­stood the calls from pub­lic ser­vants for salary in­creas­es, but added that any de­ci­sion tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment must be in the coun­try’s best in­ter­est.

The Gov­ern­ment is in salary ne­go­ti­a­tions with unions rep­re­sent­ing pub­lic sec­tor work­ers for the pe­ri­od 2014 to 2019.

The Gov­ern­ment has of­fered a four per cent in­crease.