It’s been pub­lic knowl­edge for a long time now that this coun­try need­ed to im­prove its abil­i­ty to pre­vent the im­por­ta­tion of guns, drugs and oth­er il­le­gal items through our var­i­ous le­gal ports of en­try.

Yet, the dis­clo­sure this week that 19,000 con­tain­ers ar­rived in the last eight months and were cleared with­out be­ing checked, is shock­ing.

The mag­ni­tude of the prob­lem, as dis­closed to the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee of Par­lia­ment by Comp­trol­ler of Cus­toms Vidyah Mar­cial on Wednes­day, has left us con­fused about why this lack of prop­er se­cu­ri­ty has been al­lowed to last this long.

Among her rev­e­la­tions was that none of the con­tain­er scan­ners at the ports were work­ing.

In fact, the on­ly op­er­a­tional scan­ner is the one lo­cat­ed in the bag­gage room of the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

T&T was gift­ed a TT$25 mil­lion scan­ner in 2014 by the Peo­ple’s Re­pub­lic of Chi­na and the Unit­ed States Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion do­nat­ed four mo­bile scan­ners in April 2018, val­ued at US$7.2 mil­lion.

When the Gov­ern­ment re­ceived the equip­ment, then-act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced con­fi­dent­ly that it would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­strict the im­por­ta­tion of weapons and il­le­gal nar­cotics that had been fu­elling vi­o­lent crime at the time.

Ms Mar­cial’s rev­e­la­tions on Wednes­day, com­ing in the same week that the coun­try crossed the mark for the high­est mur­ders in a cal­en­dar year, speaks vol­umes of the prob­lem we con­tin­ue to face.

The break­down in the equip­ment can­not be di­vorced from the rise in mur­ders through­out 2022.

Among the killings were 14 triple mur­ders, most car­ried out with high-pow­ered weapons. The spray­ing of bul­lets in the com­mis­sion of these crimes has al­so led to in­no­cent deaths, in­clud­ing those of chil­dren.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, the weapons used by these killers are brought in­to the coun­try from the Unit­ed States through le­gal ports of en­try hid­den in bar­rels and con­tain­ers.

We’re con­fi­dent that most of these guns would not have made it past Cus­toms’ se­cu­ri­ty checks had the prop­er equip­ment been avail­able.

Last year, the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) put the num­ber of il­le­gal guns in T&T at 12,000, val­ued at $144 mil­lion, a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge for the Po­lice Ser­vice in its at­tempts to re­duce se­ri­ous crimes.

An­oth­er crit­i­cal con­cern raised by Mar­cial is the fail­ure of the State to prop­er­ly staff the Di­vi­sion.

She told the JSC that Cus­toms re­quires 700 staff but is cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing with just 272 ex­pe­ri­enced per­son­nel and 82 re­cent­ly hired ones, a short­fall of 346.

Clear­ly, with a short­age of man­pow­er and equip­ment, we can­not ex­pect any bet­ter from those charged with reg­u­lat­ing the goods and oth­er items com­ing in­to the coun­try.

The Gov­ern­ment must make these con­cerns a pri­or­i­ty in the new year.

To con­tin­ue in a state where the con­di­tions for a broad in­flux of weapons and drugs pre­vail of­fers us no com­fort that the sense­less bru­tal­i­ty to which we have been ex­posed in 2022, will be re­versed in the com­ing year.