Nadaleen Singh

Bor­der Force se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers from the Unit­ed King­dom are do­ing spot checks at Pi­ar­co Air­port and at Arthur NR Robin­son Air­port on pas­sen­gers bound for that coun­try as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure against drug traf­fick­ing.T&T Guardian un­der­stands that pas­sen­gers fly­ing econ­o­my class are be­ing asked what is the pur­pose of their vis­it to the UK and how long they plan to stay.Pas­sen­gers have com­plained about be­ing kept stand­ing in the check-in line too long as a re­sult.

The UK High Com­mis­sion con­firmed on Mon­day that the op­er­a­tion was "part of an on­go­ing ex­er­cise. UK Bor­der Force of­fi­cials are work­ing with T&T cus­toms of­fi­cials on a num­ber of flights from Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. This is not lim­it­ed to econ­o­my class," the com­mis­sion said in e-mailed re­spons­es.

The ex­er­cise, which be­gan in Sep­tem­ber, is a joint one with T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and is al­so "com­ple­ment­ing and con­tin­u­ing the work car­ried out by OC­NFB (Or­gan­ised Crime, Nar­cotics and Firearms Bu­reau)," it said.

The High Com­mis­sion has de­nied that T&T was sin­gled out for the op­er­a­tion, on­ly say­ing that the ex­er­cise is be­ing done in the Caribbean re­gion and that "T&T is one of a num­ber of lo­ca­tions in the East­ern Caribbean where these ex­er­cis­es are car­ried out to stem the flow of nar­cotics, in­clud­ing co­caine, to the UK and Eu­rope."Op­er­a­tions of this na­ture are al­so be­ing done rou­tine­ly at UK air­ports, in­clud­ing Gatwick and Heathrow, the High Com­mis­sion said.

Asked how many se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were work­ing in T&T, the High Com­mis­sion said it could not di­vulge that in­for­ma­tion for "op­er­a­tional rea­sons."The High Com­mis­sion has told vis­i­tors to the UK that "this is a rou­tine ac­tiv­i­ty which, in T&T, has been led by OC­NFB. This col­lab­o­ra­tive ef­fort is aimed at tack­ling or­gan­ised crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly the traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics, whilst bring­ing as lit­tle dis­rup­tion to pas­sen­gers as pos­si­ble."

The 2013 In­ter­na­tion­al Nar­cotics Con­trol Strat­e­gy Re­port on T&T says: "The en­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­als work­ing to com­bat nar­cotics in T&T face con­sid­er­able chal­lenges and in­suf­fi­cient sup­port from po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship."Ad­di­tion­al re­forms are nec­es­sary to ex­pe­dite case pros­e­cu­tion, re­vise out­dat­ed laws and es­tab­lish an ev­i­dence-based crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem as fun­da­men­tal pre­req­ui­sites for rais­ing con­vic­tion rates and de­ter­ring traf­fick­ers."

What is the Bor­der Force

The Bor­der Force falls un­der the UK's Home Of­fice min­istry. It is man­dat­ed to:

�2 check the im­mi­gra­tion sta­tus of peo­ple ar­riv­ing in/leav­ing the UK

�2 search in­com­ing bag­gage, ve­hi­cles and car­go for il­lic­it goods or il­le­gal im­mi­grants

�2 pa­trol the UK coast­line and search ves­sels to pre­vent smug­gling

�2 gath­er in­tel­li­gence to pro­tect cus­toms rev­enues

�2 alert the po­lice and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to peo­ple of in­ter­est en­ter­ing or leav­ing the UK.