The Gov­ern­ment is to buy two ve­hi­cle scan­ners at a cost of $20 mil­lion in or­der to lock down all ports of en­try to the coun­try and sti­fle the im­por­ta­tion of il­le­gal drugs and weapons, Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said yes­ter­day.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair, Cadiz said the move to buy the scan­ners was ini­ti­at­ed be­fore last week's seizure of $644 mil­lion worth of co­caine in Nor­folk, Vir­ginia, USA. The il­le­gal drug was re­port­ed­ly shipped from T&T."We are tak­ing steps to en­sure we can close off our ports. We can man­age the ports," he added.Cadiz said the scan­ners should be avail­able in just over six months.

He said a ves­sel track­ing man­age­ment sys­tem was al­so to be in­stalled "to man­age our seas bet­ter, es­pe­cial­ly the Gulf of Paria. It is an all-out ef­fort... every sin­gle area we are look­ing at."The min­is­ter said prop­er mea­sures must al­so be im­ple­ment­ed for goods leav­ing the coun­try "to en­sure our bor­ders are se­cured com­ing in and go­ing out."He said there were guns in To­ba­go and there was no fa­cil­i­ty there that pro­duced the weapons. "It is thought that there is some move­ment of il­le­gal weapons and drugs be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go," Cadiz said, adding that the plans will bring about "a fur­ther clam­p­down on the move­ment of il­le­gal drugs and am­mu­ni­tion."Cadiz in­sist­ed: "We have to close off every area that we can find that we can lock down. We will be do­ing that. We will close off all those holes that we can find... we will block them."

He said the Gov­ern­ment had the po­lit­i­cal will to deal with crime and was com­mit­ted to do­ing just that."You are go­ing to see a marked dif­fer­ence in how we se­cure the var­i­ous ports," he said.New pas­sen­ger scan­ners al­so were to be in­stalled at air­ports, Cadiz added.Asked about the sta­tus of the new $25 mil­lion port scan­ners, Cadiz said they should be in­stalled by the end of next month.In Sep­tem­ber last year, Trade, In­dus­try and In­vest­ments Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said the scan­ners would be in­stalled by Christ­mas last year. Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Cadiz said the re­quired ap­provals were be­ing sought for the equip­ment to be in­stalled in a few weeks.Cadiz al­so de­scribed op­er­a­tions at the Cari­com jet­ty in Port-of-Spain as mass con­fu­sion, adding ef­forts are to be made to rec­ti­fy this.He said he would lead a team of of­fi­cials to the site to­day to de­ter­mine how op­er­a­tions could be made more ef­fi­cient as the present arrange­ment cre­at­ed ma­jor traf­fic jams on the near­by Beetham High­way and the car park fa­cil­i­ty was not ad­e­quate.